new episodes tuesdays + thursdays
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.
Two Big Announcements for 2023
We usually share a free-balling, brain-storming episode around this time of year about what we want the next year to look like. We are so ecstatic (and intimidated) about some of our ideas and we want to document them for you all to hear! This year, we dove into having a hybrid company really heavily but going into 2023, we have to ask ourselves what the right mix is for our team.
We know how stressful it can be to figure out how projects are going to happen and we encourage you to plan for the new year with flexibility. Find the balance between having a plan and being flexible to allow for inevitable changes that you can’t predict. Be prepared that your plan may not happen exactly the way you want it to. Spend your planning time looking at where your leads are coming from and what makes sense for your business based on the leads that you have.
Before You Create a New Offer, Listen to This
There have been a lot of conversations in our incubator coaching lately about what to do when leads are lower. But that’s only part of the conversation. Today, we want to focus on how to know what’s right when you’re considering different ideas to pursue. When we’re in a rut, we tend to think that it’s time to think far outside of the box. Innovation is amazing when you’re in a season to be able to create something new and it makes sense, but when you need a cash injection, or you want to start the year off with a bang, it’s not necessarily the best time to start with something brand new!
What if, instead, you looked for ways to do the same thing, but in a different room? Could you do the same thing through a different lens? At the end of the day, if you already have systems and processes around the thing that you have been delivering, selling, and pricing, it’s so much easier to stay in that lane. Don't reinvent the wheel! While it might sound counterintuitive, we encourage you not to think outside the box, but to spin it in a different direction. It’s the same thing, just from a different viewpoint!
The Importance of Clearly Defining Your Role as The Founder of Your Business
Today’s episode is all about how to define your role in your company. As we look towards the start of a new year, we always like to comb through the job descriptions of the people on our team, as well as ourselves. What we’ve noticed is that defining the role of founders and CEOs is something that is often overlooked. So, we are intentional about taking the time to get really clear on the things that we need to do versus the things that we want to do so that we can find a healthy balance between the two!
9 Operational Changes, Tweaks, and Eliminations Team Boss Project Will See in 2023
As we look ahead to the new year, we’re evaluating what we want to take forward with us, what we’ll discontinue in the new year, and what we’d like to tentatively start investigating. Here at Boss Project, we’ve been in the throes of planning for 2023 and have settled on some decisions which we share with you in this episode! Tune in to find out what we’re carrying forward with us and why, what we’ve decided to drop, and three potential additions that we’re contemplating bringing into the mix.
How to Encourage Your Team to Be Problem Solvers
If you dream of having a team full of problem solvers, you’ve come to the right place. In the previous episode, we talked about the four types of problem solvers that your team needs. In this episode, we investigate how to encourage your employees to be problem solvers in the first place. Efficiency is championed in the workplace, and the number one thing to get in the way of it is the brake of identifying and solving problems. For this reason, there is often a lot of resistance to turning the focus onto innovation. Yes, it takes time, but it’s worth it! Tune in to hear our advice on creating space for innovation and incentivizing problem-solving. We leave you with seven practical ways to promote a culture of creativity and innovation within your team!
The 4 Types of Problem Solvers Your Team Needs
We recently came across an article about the types of problem solvers (or innovators) that exist within a business. In this episode, we are going to be sharing a breakdown of this article. The idea is to encourage you, as a leader, to look at your team and determine whether it is diverse enough in terms of the perspectives and roles as well as whether it is cognitively diverse enough. This is such an important conversation because there are certain things that will be innately easy for some people and much harder for others and when you understand the dynamics of your team, everyone can help each other out. For anyone looking to grow their team in the coming year, this episode is for you!
How to Grow Your Business Through Hiring Well with The Founder of Hello Savvy Abbey Ashley
Do you find hiring daunting? Do you want to find the right people that will grow your business but don't know how? Then this episode is for you! It’s been a minute since we’ve had a guest on the Strategy HourPodcast, but we absolutely had to bring our friend Abbey Ashley on so that you can hear more of what she's got going on with hiring, and get some tips from a multi million dollar CEO on how she has navigated hiring in her business, along with a few personal anecdotes from our experience over at BossProject.
The New Phases of Adulthood: How to Figure Out What You Actually Want
Have you ever felt that you’ve run out of boxes to check? It can feel unsettling not to be clear on what you should be pursuing, especially as you get older. We were pretty surprised to find out that most of the things we strive for as we age are actually developmental milestones. We learned that, with the passing of each decade, there needs to be a realignment to work toward a new set of goals. There’s a progression from building your career in your twenties, to finding life alignment in your thirties, connecting to passion and purpose in your forties, and building a legacy in your fifties and beyond. Striving to make these things a priority is a natural part of the life cycle.
Use These Conversation Strategies We Learned from Love is Blind Before Your Next Networking Event
We’re sure everyone is familiar with the popular Netflix reality TV show, Love is Blind, but did you know that you can actually learn some tools for having successful conversations at your next networking event from the show? No, these conversations won’t end in a terrifying wedding whereby all your guests anxiously await the words ‘I do’ or ‘I don’t.’ But, you could stand to create incredibly meaningful professional relationships and even friendships. You will also develop your social skills and self-esteem which will have a positive impact on your business!
The New Way to Look at Boundaries So They Actually Stick
This is not the first time we’re speaking about boundaries, and it won’t be the last. We love boundaries! They’re our favorite ‘B word’. We like setting them, we like holding them, and we like helping other people set them. One thing we find interesting is that when we start the conversation about boundaries and we lovingly push our clients or our team to create, set, and hold a boundary, it can be triggering for a lot of people. That’s because it makes us reflect on toxic behaviors we have allowed or done or negative stories we have told ourselves about why we might need boundaries.
The Key to Sustainable Client Delivery
We have worked with many different service providers over the years. And in that time we’ve learned a great deal from their wide-ranging responses to any number of situations and scenarios that inevitably pop up with clients — be they totally bizarre or bordering on the mundane. In today’s episode, we take a closer look at how to deliver a sustainable client experience. One that is consistent from client to client and can be maintained and altered as your business grows and scales.
When you’re in the thick of the behind-the-scenes work of running your business, it’s easy to lose sight of the client experience. This is why it’s so important to have systems in place that allow you to not only receive client feedback but to come up with solutions that are then seamlessly integrated into your business. We break down the most common issues we’ve seen service providers get stuck on and offer insights on how to fine-tune your internal systems for a unique client experience with staying power!
How to Be More Creative (It's Not How You Think!)
Creativity is generally associated with art, yet it encompasses so much more than that! Because of the narrow definition of creativity, the majority of adults feel out of touch with their creativity or devoid of it altogether! Studies show that it’s in our DNA to be creative. Yet, as we get older and are influenced by society’s limitations of what constitutes creativity, we fail to flex our creative muscle in a way that resonates with us as individuals. All of us are intrinsically creative, whether we’re artistic or not, and in this episode, we break down what creativity means to us and share tips for getting in touch with your creativity and helping others to do the same.
The Goal & The Gap: How to Actually Plan for 2023
We’re nearing the end of 2022 and auditing season is upon us! The time is ripe to start looking at how you want 2023 to pan out personally and operationally within your business. We want you to conquer the world, so today, we’re going to share some tips for setting yourself up for success in the new year. Although auditing might not sound sexy, it’s one of our favorite things to do. In this episode, we share some of the strategies we’ve used over the years to carry out an effective audit. You’ll learn how best to take stock of which areas need tweaking in order for you to reach your goals in 2023! Bear in mind that this doesn’t have to be your final iteration but making decisions in advance and working backwards from your goal is essential. Tune in to find out how to identify your financial goal and gap, find a plausible method to fill that gap, and reach your goals!
How to Handle Discounts and Free Collaborations as a Service Provider
The festive season is upon us! And for service providers that means navigating the immense pressure to take part in retail-centric holidays like Black Friday Sales. In today’s episode, we answer some of the most common listener questions that come up over the holiday season. Like how to handle pressures around Black Friday Sales, when to allow discounts, when free collaborations are worth it, and whether you should work with friends and family.
It may seem like the benefits of some of those things are worth it, but they also come with plenty of hidden costs. Tuning in you’ll hear us share some of the key things we’ve learned from working with relatives, taking part in Black Friday sales, and offering our services for free. These things are a lot more complicated than they seem at first glance! Today’s episode is all about uncovering the true cost of these kinds of discounts, optimizing your price plans, and learning how to give your time the value it deserves. Because if you’re going to spend time away from work, we want it to be spent regenerating and being present with your family, not chasing false leads!
How to Actually Build a Regret-Free Business
We’ve been working with our clients behind the scenes and noticing some commitment issues when it comes to setting goals and deciding on how to reach them. On some level, the hesitation stems from perfectionism and feelings of Imposter Syndrome. But there’s more to it than that. Today we want to talk about an article that we read recently which delves into the things that we’ve been talking about for years, but from a different angle. Ultimately, perfectionism, Imposter Syndrome and all the related feelings come from a place of worrying about making the wrong decisions. So, we’re going to unpack the principles of creating a regret-free business and life!
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Could your neurodivergence be the key to unlocking your entrepreneurial superpower? Today I’m joined by Skye Waterson; a former academic-turned-coach, podcast host, and founder of Unconventional Organisation. Unconventional Organisation is an international ADHD support service that provides research-backed coaching programs for late-diagnosed professionals looking to go to the next level in their career without burnout.