Today, I want to talk about why it's super important to strengthen your business so it can handle the unexpected stuff that happens in life. Bad things are gonna happen, it's just a fact. But you don't want your business to rely too much on you to handle all the problems. Personally, I don't want to have to depend on someone else for money, and I bet a lot of you feel the same way. You want your business to stay strong even when life gets challenging. It's not about fixing every problem perfectly; it's about keeping things going smoothly even when things get tough.

If you follow us on social media, you might have seen that we have been on quite the podcast roadshow! One theme that kept coming out of our conversations is the things that service providers need to think about before scaling. We realized we need to take a step back and talk about it: what is scaling actually?

A lot of business owners misconstrue scaling and growth. Today, we want to talk about the actual definitions of these two processes, and how you can apply them in your business. You can have one without the other. You can have both. You can have neither. What does that really look like, intentionally, in your business? Tune in to find out!

Hey everybody and welcome back to the Strategy Hour Podcast! Today we are very, very excited to have Jane Lu as our guest. Jane is the founder of Showpo and has been in Forbes, Cosmopolitan and won numerous awards for her business! What started as a small clothing store in her parents garage in 2010 has grown and grown to the huge online store that is today. Their goal is to reach $100 million in revenue by 2020 and boy do we think they will achieve it! Jane is so inspiring and we love the way her brain works, she makes fast decisions and is such a visionary; qualities that have taken her company to amazing heights.

In our conversation Jane breaks down the milestones, learning curves, mistake, strategies and almost every important step in the process, so get ready to take some notes! This episode is a great insight into the turning points that any business faces and how to ride them out to success. Jane admits that some of the strategy she now espouses she has only seen in hindsight, quite an achievement for a business that now has 150 staff members and started with two racks of clothing less than nine years ago! Now, let’s get into the show.

Can you believe we have made it to Episode 300 of the podcast? How is this possible? We are so grateful to have had all of you along for the ride and cannot wait to do the next 300! As we go into our third full year here at TCC, we wanted to celebrate another milestone besides that one. Some time during the last six months or so, without us even really being aware, we made our first million! We know, this sounds crazy but it’s true!

So, we have a crazy idea! We’re excited and nervous about it and can’t wait to share with you. We have big dreams this year and yep, you guessed it. We want to take you on our journey to $100k per month. We recently came to the conclusion that making this amount of money every month is realistically quite doable for us at this point. We have formulated some new strategies, broken down more of our goals and in the next few weeks, we’re going to be pushing to make our $100k month a reality.

In this episode, we will be sharing with you how this dream came about and delving into the shifts of our money mindset, our questions and fears and why money is amoral and much like a brick. We want to open up the conversation about money with you and encourage you to examine your own money mindset. So, by the end of this episode, you should feel more comfortable talking about money, dreaming big and feeling less guilty about wanting more money – if that is what you truly want.

Ever wonder how to go about growing your business and which strategy to pursue? Maybe you feel stuck and you are at the breaking point where something’s got to give? Well, today on the podcast we jump into exactly how to scale and grow your team. We tackle all the questions you need to be asking yourself before you even decide whether a team is the right move for you. Because for some of you, a team might not be the answer; it just might be what you think is the answer.

We first discovered Jeff on Instagram. Jeff is a photographer who loves to take a lot of architectural images, and so, naturally, we fell in love with his work. Not long after, we discovered his wife, Kelly, and we just absolutely had to follow them both! We followed their work for a year and a half before reaching out to them, and it’s been such a fun journey getting know them on a more personal level, and getting the inside scoop on how their business actually runs.

If you know of Studio DIY, you know that they have hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, and that their DIY blog is pretty outstanding. In our talk with them, we discover more about their journey, what the early days of Studio DIY looked like, how they built sponsorship and affiliate relationships, and how they decided what to charge for those sponsorships (everyone’s burning question!). They also share what it was like branching out and creating their own physical product line.

Since then, they’ve grown a lot and implemented tons of incredible strategies in their business to make it what it is today. So, if you are a DIY’er yourself, you absolutely have to give this one and listen!

We are super excited to bring our friend Amber Housley onto the podcast today. We had the opportunity to meet Amber last year at the Savvy Experience and it was so wonderful getting to know her, getting to hang out with her, and learning more about what she does. Because, if you all didn’t know, she does a lot!

Amber has her hands in a lot of creative businesses. She is rocking it at her own brand and along with that, she also has the Inspired Retreat, the Joyful Garden Planner, and her brand new course, Blooming Business Kits. In addition, she’s also the marketing director for Lara Casey Media, which means she’s involved in Southern Weddings, PowerSheets, and everything Lara Casey.

Together we dive into talking about taking a support role and what it’s like to not always play boss. We discuss the benefits, the challenges, what she’d love to change, and what it is truly like to resist a support role and then embrace it completely. We also talk a little bit about balance and what it means to run a lot of creative businesses and have your hands in a lot of different pots. Amber is an amazing example, role model, and a very humble human being, so you definitely have to listen in!