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If you run a business online, then this is the show for you. Listen in as your host, Abagail Pumphrey delivers semi-ranty business strategies touching on everything from building a profitable offer to scaling sustainably to growing an ethical culture and everything in between.
top 10 business podcast | 4 Million+ downloads | 750+ episodes
Meet Your Host
Semi-ranty business strategies for successful small business owners.
Hey, it’s your host, Abagail Pumphrey. And I’m on a personal mission to help more small business owners become financially free.
I like to nerd out on all things business, marketing, and most definitely the numbers. I’m talking all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a 7-figure online business.
I like to share it all and no conversation is off the table. We talk actionable strategies, biz challenges, and all the things life throws your way - grief, anxiety, loss, and resilience are all topics you’ll find here.
Our Best Hits
Our Favorite Tools
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The Creative Template Shop is loaded with every template your business needs to succeed. Get started by downloading your next Client Proposal, our member-favorite Services and Pricing Guide, social media templates, or Dubsado forms—just to name a few! You can purchase templates one-off, or get the best deal on all the templates by becoming a shop member!
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This is the #1 tool that we recommend to all our service provider clients. Dubsado is a business management solution designed to cut out the busywork. Build relationships, schedule appointments, and create workflows to streamline your projects from start to finish. Onboard clients, set up automations, send contracts, accept payments and more with this robust system.
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If you’d rather not be spending hours on end learning design skills and new programs just to make some graphics for your biz - definitely check out Canva. Even as professionally trained designers, we made the switch years ago simply with how easy Canva is to use. Save your brand kit, unlock magic resize, get unlimited storage, download designs with transparent backgrounds and more with Pro!
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If you’re looking for an email service provider made with creatives in mind that is simple and intuitive, look no further than Flodesk. We got tired of email formatting being a coding how-to and let’s not talk about the monthly cost. Flodesk’s drag and drop features make formatting emails a breeze, plus it’s one set price no matter if your list is 1,000 subscribers or 100,000. Try it out today!
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No website? No problem. If simplicity is key for your business, we suggest utilizing Leadpages as your landing page, sales page, opt-in page and more. It’s drag-and-drop design makes it easy for beginners to design something on brand + quick so you can get your business out there ASAP.
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A visual-first planning tool for social media. Use it for Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. Plan, Schedule and Post with this all-in-one software. Stay up to date with hashtags and trends so you can analyze and optimize your strategy. Manage a linkin.bio within Later to direct your audience to the places that really matter —your website or checkout links.
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Communication is the secret sauce to successful high-touch client experiences. Simple Texting allows you to fire one-off messages, a series of messages in an automation, tag clients and more. Back up your regular email communication with text messages to create a wholistic experience.
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Host digital products, courses, coaching, memberships, and more on Teachable’s all-in-one platform. Their no-code platform is perfect for businesses who want to create real impact. We've used Teachable to sell millions of dollars in digital products & courses. It has allowed us to work with more than 30,607+ students, ensuring a quality experience and better results for our clients.
We may receive commissions when you click our links and make purchases. However, this does not impact our reviews or comparisons.
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Listener Love
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My Favorite Podcast!
Not only is their show super entertaining, it is packed FULL of amazing content and learnings that I have tried with success. PLUS their authentic and real interactions in instagram DMs really proved to me that they truly care and are here to help and support in this noisy world of people hustling to get your attention. I can’t recommend this show enough!
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Great Insights
Invaluable information on starting a business, building a brand, etc. They are relatable and easy to listen too. There’s no useless fluff or bragging, just full to the brim with good info. Listen to be inspired!
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Thank you for your realness!
As a perfectionist who always “shoulds” on myself, I want to THANK YOU for the practical business advice and for keeping it real! After listening to an episode, I feel ready to tackle the next step... instead of feeling completely overwhelmed. Thank you both for your honesty. It helps me set better goals, reflect more truthfully, and actually get stuff done!
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Real guidance and conversations
Abagail and Emylee keep it real. I love their focus on helping creative entrepreneurs to build a soul-fulfilling and profitable business. We don’t get that kind of guidance in university or from our parents (at least, I didn’t!) and it’s invaluable. The conversations these two hosting about empowering women and shifting the conversation in the entrepreneur community are so important.
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Entertaining, insightful, and actionable! 🔥
Whether you’re well established as an entrepreneur, or just getting started carving out a profitable niche that’s ready to grow—this is a must-listen podcast for you! Abagail and Emylee do an incredible job leading conversations that cover a huge breath of topics related to the ins and outs of building a thriving business - and life you can be proud of - with leaders who’ve actually experienced success themselves.
How to Build an Engaged Community (Online and IRL) with Ashley Knight of Hello Boss
On today’s episode we are super-duper excited to host Ashley Knight of The Hello Boss Community. Ashley founded the community as a means to support and bolster other businesswomen who were in the same boat as her. Through her group she is able to teach and coach strategy to an ever growing number of dedicated members and she loves it! And we love her for it! Here at The Strategy Hour Podcast we know the value the of groups we have run and been a part of, they can be the lifeboat bringing you back in when you are out at sea, so we know exactly what Ashley is talking about!
In our discussion we cover the early stages of starting a supportive community, relationships within this space, real world events, social media, sensitivity masterminds and much more. Ashley is one of the most dedicated community founders we have spoken to and we are sure her attitude and advice is going to be wonderfully useful and inspiring to all of our listeners. So whether you are part of an online community or looking to start one yourself, this is definitely the episode for you. Listen in to get the low-down.
7 Productivity Hacks for the New Year
In this episode we dive into seven habits we believe lead to a more productive life and a more productive business. These seven habits will ultimately help you achieve the goals and dreams you are seeking – whether those are personal or financial. You are one person, with multiple facets, and you can’t play blind to the fact that you have a life outside of work! We want to incorporate that into living a lifestyle that gets you where you want to go. These seven habits have been monitored over time in our own business. Whenever we are incredibly productive, we take a look at everything that we were doing over that time and ask, “What was a constant? What habits combined aided our productivity?”
A lot of people ask us what is it that makes us so productive, and everyone seems to be waiting for that miracle answer. But the reason why we are covering seven habits is because it is never just one thing. It’s never just one thing you do that helps you sell more, or get more people on your list, or land more clients. It is a combination of things that helps to create a successful business and a successful human being. So take a listen and learn more about the seven habits we focus on that have led to more productivity in our lives and how it can lead to more productivity in your life too.
Lessons in Name Changes and How to Truly Run a Business That Serves First with Nathan Barry of ConvertKit
We have such a great episode for all of you today, we literally cannot wait to share it! Today on the Strategy Hour we host Nathan Barry from ConvertKit! Now it may come as a bit of surprise he is not actually here to talk about email marketing and funnels and all that good stuff that we all love him for, but rather he is going to explain the big changes that almost happened at ConvertKit this year. We say almost because for those who might not know, ConvertKit, the hugely successful and constantly growing company almost changed their name during the summer and then decided not to. So Nathan is here to give the low down on this experience, how it all transpired and the lessons he and the company took away from it.
There is so much to learn in the episode so grab whatever you need. Maybe even some tissues because it gets a little emotional! We chat about handling audience reactions, moving forward with ConvertKit, difficult conversations, the big lessons, and much more! This conversation is such a true and honest reflection on a difficult and potentially disastrous process and it is not often we all get to have such an inside scoop on a true industry leader. So without much more ado, let’s dive right in!
Haven't Planned 2019 Yet? This Is How You Can Do It In a Day
Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of your favorite podcast! We are doing all the end of year round ups, reflections and strategy activities and today is all about getting that planning in for next year. We cannot believe 2018 is basically already over; it has just flown by and we are pretty sure you feel the same way! So if you have not yet got down to planning things for you and your biz, this is just what you need to get started and crush that session. We all need things on our calendars so we do not go stumbling blindly into the next rotation around the sun. So why not get down to it with us? We got you!
We will also be giving a few sneak peeks into what we will be doing next year, so you are not going to want to miss that juicy info! We chat about making time for your planning session and how to prepare successfully as well as getting into some of the key aspects of realistic and inspiring goal setting. A key takeaway from today is how to look at the drivers of your goals and using this information to make more accurate and helpful plans. On top of this, we give a few frameworks and suggestions, things that have helped us immensely in the past and we finish off today’s show with some failsafes, so you don’t do a lot of planning only to forget about it a few months into the new year. So for all that and more, join us on today’s episode!
When Leaving Your Business to Work For Someone Else Makes Sense With Indigo Colton
Hello all of you beautiful people and wonderful biz queens! Today on the show we are super happy to be speaking to our friend Indigo Colton about the recent switch she made from running her own business to become a full time employee at someone else’s company. We think this topic has not been covered enough and it is really an important subject to understand if this question ever arises for you. We will be hearing from Indigo about her thought process, the deciding factors and some of the potential red flags. For Indigo, the change was the right move and we will try and unpack why it was the case so hopefully you can keep making the right choices for yourselves!
Some of you may already know Indigo but this peak inside her mind is a great way to get to know another side of her. We have a really interesting conversation we know you are going to love! We have noticed people seem to be a little hesitant to share their own experiences and inner workings on this subject, so it is just great to have an open and honest conversation about these things. We will be covering the feeling of going from being your own boss to the position of an employee, benefits and things that can be learned from another business, networking possibilities and all of Indigo’s ideas and feelings in-between! So let’s get right down to it!
Lessons from 2018: Scaling, Creating Connections & Personal Growth
Hey everybody! Welcome to our round up of the lessons we learned in 2018! As usual we learned a lot, if not more during this last year, so we have so much to share with all of you. You also know we love reflecting and reviewing and this podcast will basically be a fleshing out of all the important steps we took and progress we made in our business. We are hoping that you will follow along with us and do the same sort of thing with your biz! Hopefully ours will give you some ideas of how to reflect on the past year and the important points that came out of it.
A quick reminder that if you have been enjoying the podcast over the last 12 months (or more!) to leave us a review online, or tag us in your Instagram post or story. We love hearing from all of you and this is a great time to show our mutual appreciation. We love to repost and share content from our listeners, so get going with it! In our talk today we cover scaling, pivoting, hiring a CFO, summits, Traction, refueling creativity and much more. Are we all ready? Good! Let’s get into it!
Boss Talk: Is it Possible for Someone with Mindset Issues to Get Past Them and Succeed? Or, are Successful People Just Naturally in the Right Place?
Hello everyone and welcome back to the The Strategy Hour! Today we are once again joined by our friend Steph Crowder for a Boss Talk session and we will be discussing the role of mindset in defining success. These episodes are definitely some of our favorites and it is always a pleasure having Steph sit down for a dive into an interesting subject. We actually stole this topic straight from her and she dug into her deep archives and pulled this one out just for our listeners. We will really be considering how to get past mindset issues and how differently we combat these problems. It is such a great question and we cannot wait to unpack it right here on Boss Talk!
The discussion covers a meditation on different kinds of mindsets and attitudes and how these impact levels of success. We then go on to talk about grit, determination, and perseverance and how vital these qualities are in any type of achievement. The topics of nature and nurture are also relevant and a large takeaway from today is that we do not start on an even playing field but we do get to decide how we play the game and when we get back up from a fall. For an inspiring chat with a great soul-sister of ours, be sure to tune in!
How the Book “Traction” Changed Our Business Trajectory
Hello everybody and welcome back to our podcast! Today’s show is almost like a grown up book review project, so just imagine us handing in a report and giving a presentation at the front of the classroom! The reason we are going back to school for this one is because since we recently read the book in question, it has made such an impact on both of us and TCC as a whole that we just could not wait to share it with all of you. Today we will be talking about Traction by Gino Wickman and how it immediately changed our trajectory and gave us so many tools for our biz. We know you are going to love them all! We cannot say this enough, whatever stage of your business you are in, go read it! The book has so many great strategies and this is the Strategy Hour after all, so there you go!
Today we will be looking at a few of the exercises and frameworks that Wickman offers in the book, which cover goal setting, company roles, vision and loads of other good stuff. We guarantee that these tools will change your biz for the better, forever! The book contains fun and engaging quizzes and activities and we really recommend that you use it as a kind of work book, moving through it with your own projects and departments. We will definitely be following this episode up sometime in the not too distant future with a report back on the effects of the framework, so keep your eyes and ears peeled for that some time next year. So without more fuss, let’s get down to it!
Using the Good, Better, Best Method for Goal Setting & Partner Buy-In with Megan Hale
Hello listeners, and welcome back to The Strategy Hour Podcast. Today we are so lucky to have our friend Megan Hale with us to chat about the newest goal setting method she has adopted! What better time to talk about goal setting than November as we reach the end of another busy year and look forward to the next one. If you haven’t already started planning for 2019 then this episode is a great place to start! Megan found a way through one of the most challenging and action-packed years of her life and somehow managed, through all the commitments, to have her most successful and profitable calendar year yet, which we think is just crazy!
Having a baby at the beginning of January and her husband leaving on military deployment soon after was not quite the comfortable start to the year many of us might hope for. Let’s just say that with her business to boot, she had a lot on her plate! Anyway, prompted by this chock-a-block schedule she decided to start laying out some goals and what followed, quickly became her Good, Better, Best model, which immediately helped Megan achieve and exceed her minimum goals. Sound great? We think so! Megan does a great job of unpacking all of the juicy and useful parts of this. So stay tuned to hear how you can get a complimentary template from Megan to start you off!
Why We Take Every December Off (And How You Can Too)
Welcome back to another episode of the Strategy Hour Podcast. Today we are diving into why we take every December off. Now the truth is, we love you all, but we are tired! Our brains hurt, our throats hurt, and it’s time to take some time away. Life can get incredibly busy, especially around the holiday season, and sometimes that can be just too much to handle on top of running a business full-time. We all know that as Murphy’s Law would have it, everything happens all at once; business picks up, family events are scheduled, big life changes happen, you name it!
So inside this episode we are diving into exactly why we have adopted this strategy of taking the month of December off, and what it has done for our business and our personal lives. We also dig into exactly how we manage to prepare and plan ahead with our team to be able to pull it off. Finally, we share all the juicy details to help you do it too. That’s right, you can do it too! Just take what you learn here from us today, see how you can apply it directly to your business, and jump on the magical train to free Decembers!
Boss Talk: How Do You Deal with People Not Understanding What You Do for a Living? With Courtney Foster-Donahue
Hello all you business badasses and wonderful women! We are so glad to have you here for yet another episode of our little podcast. This week the The Strategy Hour is all about dealing with what can be a very tricky and irritating problem. Yup, you guessed it: how can you go about approaching the issue of people not understanding what your job really is? Most of us entrepreneurs and online business owners have encountered this dynamic in some way and it can be pretty tiresome and frequent!
So what are we to say and do in these situations? Whether it’s at a family gathering or in another social or business setting, we want to talk a little about what it’s like and share a few ideas on how to deal with this. To help us unpack the issue we have invited our dear friend Courtney Foster-Donahue who shares our frustrations in these regards and she has some great advice for all of you introverts out there that you are not going to want to miss. So without further ado, let’s get into it!
A Breakdown of the Boss Project Summit: $77k in Sales, 380k Minutes Watched, 171k Messages Delivered & Counting
Welcome back to the show! Today’s episode of The Strategy Hour Podcast is a breakdown of our recent amazing and wonderful Boss Project Summit! This was pretty much the biggest thing we have ever done at TCC and it has just wrapped, so what better to talk about than that? This behind the scenes look at the summit and the statistics that came out of it is just a taste of things to come. The few days over which we held the event had a massive impact and we had fun and made money and we cannot wait to share more of the in depth information we have gathered.
Bear in mind that it is still early stages in terms of the outcomes, which we will continue to collect and collate, but there is definitely more than enough to talk about today and give you the inside scoop after all the madness! We would be remiss not to send out a big thank you to everyone who made the summit possible and we are eternally grateful to our sponsors, contributors, the participants, and each other for bringing this great thing to life! We have to admit that we are already thinking about next time and how we might make it better, stronger, and more of everything it was this time!
Hiring Your First (or Next) VA Domestic or Abroad with Bonnie Fahy
Hey everybody, and welcome back to The Strategy Hour. Today we are super happy to have a conversation with Bonnie Fahy, who is the founder of SourceIt where she helps her students and clients grow their businesses through outsourcing. Bonnie has a particular approach, which she calls “hybrid sourcing”, that can make your company run more smoothly and iron out some of the traditional issues with getting outside help. Bonnie is going to be telling us all about how it works and how you can use it to your great advantage. Sound great? We think so! She is going to be giving concrete, actionable advice on how you can build your team and grow your revenue through some very simple steps. So you are not going to want to miss this episode!
The subject of hiring and how you go about sourcing your employees can sometimes be taboo; but don’t worry, in this fearless conversation we break down all these walls and give you the real inside scoop. Here at TCC we have had our fair share of successes and failures with hiring over the Internet and we are so excited to share Bonnie’s revolutionary and forward-thinking rules of the game with all of you, our listeners. Bonnie even tells us how she managed to quadruple her income in just three months using the strategies she is going to be explaining today! This means that by outsourcing smartly, you can have a lot more money in your pocket and also free up more time to do the things most important to you. Get ready, and let’s dive in!
This Myth About Overwhelm Has Us Fired Up
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of your favorite biz podcast! Here at the Strategy Hour we always hope to give you the best advice, tools, and inspiration to get that business of yours popping and today is no different. This episode is all about a certain myth that has us a bit hot under the collar and we want nothing more than to dispel it! It goes something along the lines of not being able to reach your goals because of being overwhelmed by too much content and too many things to do. Now, we know this feeling, so don’t think it’s just you! But we are also here to tell you, get off your backside and start working because it is just not true and it is certainly no excuse to not put in the work!
So today we are going to be putting this myth to rest and giving you the fire and energy to go and get out of that overwhelmed funk! Okay? Great! We’ll be talking about how to interact with resources and content in an effective way and connect the dots between your to do list and the strategies you hear about. We implore you again and again to take action, a constant reminder throughout the episode, so take heed! And don’t worry, we also get into how we have slipped up in these ways over the past year and talk about some of the missteps we took in this regard. An important takeaway is the idea of co-working and accountability groups, something we have used — especially when starting out — to great effect. We finish off the chat thinking about ways to simplify your business and identifying your KPIs and critical numbers. So let’s get right into it!
Manifesting Space and Empowering People with Kinzie Ferguson
Hello all you wonderful listeners out there! Today we have a great episode for you and one that is a little out of the ordinary. We are chatting with Kinzie Ferguson who is a boudoir photographer and a great friend of ours too! This conversation is going to be all about how Kinzie recently manifested her dream studio space and the process that allowed her to do it. This was a big deal for her and the experience really drove home some things that Kinzie believes in. We will also be chatting about how Kinzie goes about empowering people and her philosophy towards compliments, positivity and intentionality.
It was recently Kinzie’s birthday and we decided pretty spontaneously to have this conversation at her party! This episode has it all, we talk about the importance of hard work and family, intentionality and just serving your people as best you can. We are going to getting kind of woo today, which is something we have been wanting to do for a while and this was the perfect excuse. We will be talking tarot readings, birth charts, the moon, and more. So get strapped in, we are going deep!
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Ever wondered what it really takes to build a multimillion-dollar digital product business? In this episode, I pull back the curtain to give you a transparent look at the strategies, hard-earned lessons, and yes, even mistakes that took me from running a small marketing agency to generating over $3.3 million in digital product sales. If you're ready to get paid to build a list full of qualified leads and create scalable offers that serve your audience, this episode is for you!