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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.
November 2020 Profit Report: The Month We Increased Members by 8%, But Saw 11% Less Revenue (Here’s Why)
Hi! Let’s take it back to the month of turkey days! We feel like with the holidays you quickly forget how November went, because you just roll straight into the next holiday, get distracted by family, and shopping, and cookies. Emylee promises to make Abagail some marshmallows again this year, but instead of talking about marshmallows for the whole episode which we definitely could do, we are here for another profit report!
If you are new here you should know that we now have well over a year’s worth of episodes where we share profit reports with you. We made a goal at the end of 2019 to focus more on profit – keeping more profit within our business to make more money and pay ourselves instead of reaching huge, sexy revenue goals, and our business drastically changed because of that mindset. So now, every month we share with you the breakdown of expenses, profit, where the money went – a breakdown of products in our company, so you can be inspired to do the same breakdown within yours!
2020 Recap – Massive Growth with 32% Profit Margins
How are we able to talk about the end of 2020 already? We don’t know because this has been the fastest, craziest year in life and business for us in a while. For a while, it felt like we were having the longest months, and then things just seemed to speed up. We think a lot of people have had a similar experience. We don’t know if it was because people were home and things didn’t feel like they were changing and then suddenly it was fall and then winter. And now Christmas is around the corner! How are we at this point in the year already?
So today we want to talk about 2020 specifically and what happened in our businesses. If you look at all the goals we set for 2020, how did things ultimately shape up? We will tell you, we don’t know if there were guardian angels above us but there were a few things we did really differently in Q1 that ultimately set us up for huge success, and in today’s show you will hear all about it!
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and a Million-Dollar Mindset with Rachel Rodgers of Hello Seven
On today’s show, we talk to Rachel Rodgers, the CEO of Hello Seven. Previously, she was an intellectual property lawyer but today she is a business coach who helps women hit seven figures without sacrificing their home lives and sanity. Rachel works with entrepreneurs and helps them create and protect their own intellectual property to scale their business to $1million and beyond. She has worked with The New York Times bestselling authors, tech startups, coaches, consultants, doctors, accountants, nutritionists, and more.
In this episode, we talk not only about a healthy growth mentality and seven-figure mindset, but also about diversity, inclusion, and equity, and how deciding to have those as a priority in your business is smart and strategic. Rachel gives heaps of takeaways for listeners to implement in their businesses today, and suggests some resources for finding people to begin to expand your circle.
October 2020 Profit Report: One UX Tweak We Made that Increased Our Membership by 15%
Today on the show, Emylee and Abagail walk listeners through their October profit report and, as per usual, it is nothing short of wild! Before October kicked off, Abagail and Jared suddenly needed a bigger space and ended up purchasing a new home without even planning to. What’s more is it is a fixer-upper that needs quite a bit of work, and we don’t need to tell you what a time-suck buying and renovating can be. At the same time, Emylee was away for a week on a much-needed break, and things got crazy and chaotic very quickly, but they managed to pull it together and still make a great profit in the end.
Amidst it all, they planned for a big launch in November and ran their first sale on the Creative Template Shop’s annual membership, all of which they discuss in this episode. They also had to establish whether a monthly or annual membership would be more profitable in the long term, so they did an experiment to see whether they could switch over to just an annual membership but realized that the slower conversion rate was not going to cut it just yet. Tuning in, listeners will find out how they managed to increase their memberships while reducing the one-off purchases in the Shop, and where all the other revenue came from in October. Of course, they also share the details on what they had to spend to keep things moving along smoothly and treat themselves appropriately. Be sure to tune in for all of it, and more!
How to Reorganize Roles and Responsibilities in Your Team to Prep for Hiring
In today’s episode, we are going to talk a bit about reorganization and what it looks like to really get clear on the roles and responsibilities of your team members inside your business. We will talk about how you might do this as a way to clean up and get your head straight before you go through a hiring process.
We have probably made every mistake in the book when it comes to hiring and have learned a lot over the last few years as we have expanded our team. We have come from every end of the spectrum when it comes to hiring a team – having a big team, a small team, no team, contractors, and everything in between!
Leadership Development and Creating a Sense of Ownership with Alyssa Bloom
Today's guest, Alyssa Bloom, has spent the last 10 years working for one of the biggest companies in the world, being a manager for virtual teams. She manages over 120 people and has an incredible background in management and people leadership. In this episode, we are talking about creating a sense of ownership in your community and culture in your business. We have always been open about our struggles as leaders of our internal teams. We have had challenges with motivation, delegation, and just making sure that our staff is happy and that they like what they are doing.
It has been something we have wanted to get better at ever since we hired our first VA. So, having someone we love and respect so much help us get organized and in shape was crucial, and we are sharing that process with you today, along with how you can replicate it. There are so many good takeaways that Alyssa shares. We hear how to get more organized, make good hires, and most importantly, how to create a sense of ownership within your team and have your staff be as happy as they can be.
September 2020 Profit: Five Years in Biz Reflection; Our Thoughts on FB Ad Costs and Botox
We’re excited to talk about business in September and the fact we’ve been in business for five whole years! Honestly, it now feels like we were babies when we started this whole thing because looking back at old blog posts and videos we created in the early days – you can tell that a lot has changed. We have really aged – but we think in the way that fine wine does. Abagail used to have a perfectly smooth forehead when she got botox to alleviate her migraines, but now she embraces her age and is happy to have a few extra lines. It comes with the territory! Emylee, on the other hand, loves her potions and creams and whatever it takes to bring out her youthful side.
But in this episode, we talk about how our business has aged (along with us) and how we have found our groove, shifting from a do-er to a be-er mentality and enjoying much more calm than chaos. We share what we got up to in September, focusing on the live launch we did for Strategy Academy and how we have adjusted our approach to ads for the better. Tuning in, you will also hear us talk about the appropriate amount of planning, the strategy we implemented to make the next few months easy, and all our profit and expense numbers for September.
Reduce Risk and Cover Your Legal Shizz with Braden Drake
Most of us can use a little help with the tax and accounting side of our businesses and we have just the person to talk us through the important parts of this process! Back on the show is our friend Braden Drake, who runs Braden Drake Law, where he works with a handful of one on one clients to sort out their tax and legal issues. His mission is to help as many people get as much of their business on the right track and running smoothly! He believes strongly in treating yourself like the CEO you need to be and in this episode, he covers exactly what this looks like. Spoiler alert! Braden has just finished writing a book that is about to be published! It is called Unf*ck Your Biz and details the service that Braden provides for his clients.
Braden does an amazing job of unpacking the framework of the book for us and shares the initial steps in tackling the biggest and most common mistakes he comes across. He talks about the 'oh shit cycle' that business owners get into with their taxes, how to know you are in this, and how to go about getting out! Braden shares many of our biz philosophies, striving to help you become profitable, paying yourself, and paying your taxes. We know tax can sound a bit boring but Braden is amazing at making it fun and lighthearted, so make sure to stay tuned as we get into some strategy!
August 2020 Profit Report: We ALREADY Hit Our 2020 Revenue Goal
Can you believe it’s already time for another profit report? Literally, before we hopped on to record this show we were like what happened last month, what month was even last month? We couldn’t have told you! There has been a lot going on, and it’s not so much business – it’s like, life is crazy right now and we are keeping it together but hanging on by a thread. It’s a lot!
But August went so well despite what typically happens, which is sometimes a hot mess. And we definitely want to get into all the data around that, but one thing we did, as most of you would have, was throw out our 2020 plan. We didn’t even have one and just have been taking every month at a time. We expected we would have a dip in August, and then when we got on here, we were like, ‘Oh my gosh.’
Why Now is the Best Time to Start a Business with Rachel L. Proctor
Today on the show we have Rachel Proctor, an author, speaker, and second-generation entrepreneur who helps people turn ideas into successful online businesses. She is a self-proclaimed market research junkie, she’s hit seven figures, and she knows what she’s doing, having built a versatile and trusted learning resource hub for aspiring and successful business owners. In this episode, we get into Rachel’s belief and strategy that there is no better time to start a business than right now, even in a crazy 2020, even with less time – now is still the opportune moment! She explains why she believes that and dishes out tangible steps to figure out what to offer, how to find out what you’re good at, how to find people to pay you, perfect your process, grow, and everything in between. So, for those of you who had an idea and dropped it once the pandemic hit or are just ready to take the leap but don’t know where to start, tune in to learn more!
July 2020 Profit Report: Up 40% in Revenue, Down $100k in Expenses
Let’s get into our July 2020 profit report! This year has just been super satisfying. Around fall last year we had decided and declared out loud to you that we were on this mission to get to 30% recurring profit each month, and at the time it felt like climbing a mountain. We were just really struggling and had spent all this time and money trying to figure out who makes up our team, what our products are, and how we are selling them, but something about this year just really clicked for us!
We started sharing our profit reports last fall with this goal to hold ourselves accountable. We know you guys like to hear behind the scenes. We also restructured how we did our profit reports. We don’t do it like how a lot of others do it where we don’t share our actual numbers – not that we don’t want to, but we honestly think they are distracting and put you in a space of ‘comparisonitis’, and no-one needs to suffer from that. So we wanted to showcase more of the percentages, breakdowns of our expenses, our profits, and just big picture decisions that we make every month in order to reach our goals.
June 2020 Profit Report: Investing During a Growth Season
At the end of the day, the dollars are not what matter. We want you to see profit – more income in your business. Revenue is fancy. Revenue feels sexy. Revenue does not give you the lifestyle you want though. If you’re not keeping any of that revenue, then it is irrelevant. So we want to help you keep more revenue, that is make more profit so you can increase how much you’re getting paid and also just save for crazy times! So today, we are excited to talk about our June 2020 profit report.
Instilling and Creating Company Culture with Jamie King of Flex & Flow
Today on the podcast we have Jamie King, the owner of Flex & Flow PDX (originally Fit Approach) joining us! Together with her cousin/business partner, she has built a successful online fitness community, but that’s not what we are talking about today. Nope, we discuss company culture, how to establish it based on who you are as a human being, integrating it into your business, and how you can maintain it even when you have a virtual team.
We also talk about the evolution of our company culture and what our business values are. We have often alluded to company culture in our conversations, but since it is something that seems abstract and isn’t necessarily featured on the everyday to-do-list, we tend to easily forget about it. For a long time, we let our company culture be what it was and watched the evolution of it over the years, but now we are trying to give it more direction. We aim to cultivate a relaxed, easy-going culture that promotes independence and functions on a trust basis. But company culture does not happen overnight either; it develops when you show up consistently over time. At the same time, company culture is in everything you do: every social media post, every graphic, every email you send out—so be mindful about it. We had such a great conversation with Jamie today, so be sure to listen in!
May 2020 Profit Report: Realign for Results and 2.87x Profits
Hey, friends! Today we are super excited to bring you another Boss Project profit report. As you may know, we love sharing all of the behind-the-scenes data about what worked, what didn’t work, and how everything got split up within May of this year. In this episode, you’ll get a little peek behind the curtain of our business, comparing last year to this year, and asking the hard questions for you to consider in your own business.
Before we dive in, we want to know: are you joining our podcast party? Because if you haven’t yet, now is the time! It is super easy to be a part of it. All you have to do is make sure that you are subscribed to the podcast, take a screenshot of the show, and share it over on your social media to be entered to win our monthly contest. Plus, make sure to leave a rating and review! As part of the perks of winning, you get to choose your prize: either a free copy of Trello for Business or one month free to the Creative Template Shop.
Making Less to Make More $$
We have this theory that you can make less revenue and walk away with more money in your pocket if you do a few very strategic things. Like many of you, we came to a point in our business where we were ready to see big growth—and we don’t mean make a little bit more money, but exponentially more! Who doesn’t want that, right? And we managed to do that. In the first six months, we made $100,000, doubled it four months later, and we went on to have a multiple six-figure business in our second year, and over $500,000 the year after that. We just kept going after bigger dreams and pursuing more.
But we believe there are some things you can do to help you along, and it doesn’t include focusing on that top-line number—which you can shoot yourself in the foot with. We know people who look like they are super successful online, but when you dig a little deeper, you would discover that they set themselves up in such a way they get to keep very little of the money they make. We were headed in this same direction. In this episode, we talk about this learning curve we experienced in 2018 and 2019 during which we thought we needed to do XYZ when we didn’t! Besides, what’s the point of reaching your big goals when you are not personally making any more money? Stay tuned to find out.
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I’ve been creating digital products for more than eight years now and I’ve learned so much along the way that I’m eager to share with the world. I want to help more people and cheer you on as you find success too. Your digital product should be a tool that magnetizes strangers who are your ideal customers. And you want to actually get paid to bring in qualified leads for your offers. In this episode, I’m diving into the digital products I’d avoid if I were starting fresh—and trust me, it’s not what you’d expect.