Top Business Podcast • over 4 million downloads • 900+ episodes

The Strategy Hour Podcast

with abagail pumphrey

Recognized by INC and Forbes as one of the best podcasts for entrepreneurs, join our twice-weekly show as we share business strategies, interviews, and actionable advice for building an online business your way.

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Our Episodes

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How to Create Authority and Authentic Relationships You Can Leverage In Your Business with Jaclyn Mellone

Relationships can make all the difference in your business and as many of us have learned, focusing on connections and networking in the right way can take your biz from quiet to booming! Our guest today is Jaclyn Mellone and she helps experts exponentially grow their businesses by becoming an authority in their space. One of the ways that she helps them do this is through authentic relationships. Jaclyn is a coach, strategist, keynote speaker, momma, guac lover and host of the Go-to Gal Podcast! In this episode, she shares how to create strategic relationships and how to utilize them as more than friendships without being weird about it!

For Jaclyn, it all starts with an authentic connection and she breaks down exactly what that looks like. We also talk about how this translates into creating more friends in your own space and work environment and how to utilize these to continue to grow your business in the long term. We cover leveraging relationships, creating intimate connections that fill your cup, and how to jumpstart your biz in a big way!

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Our 2020 Words of the Year and How They Apply to Your Business

It’s that time of the year again — we’re sharing our favorite words for 2020 and how they relate to your business! This past year, Abagail’s word has been “react”. She worked hard at learning to process her emotions in healthier ways and to not overreact to situations, trying to find that delicate balance between allowing yourself to feel the feelings but also not letting them guide your decision-making.

Emylee, on the other hand, wanted to approach this year with “ease”, knowing that she had many changes ahead, such as moving to a new house and figuring out childcare. What she learned in the process was that she needed to make a decision that worked for her at that moment instead of trying to make long-term, “forever” decisions for every little thing. In this episode, we share our new words for 2020, and they’re good! Why not choose a word of your own (and share it with us over on Instagram) to guide you through the year; a word that summarizes the mindset you would like to adopt and take into the new year? Be sure to join our conversation to learn the whats, whys, and hows!

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How to Get Unstuck if You're a Perfectionist or an Overachiever

Our whole mission is to help you transform your passion into a full-time business that provides you with a sustainable income, while also giving you the freedom to make your own rules. But becoming a creative entrepreneur comes with its own obstacles, and today we talk about the three-level model that we use to help our audience better understand business and where they are at in the process. The first tier of the model has you stuck in the idea phase, which often involves redesigning your brand, changing your website and trying to get all the cosmetic aspects perfect. The problem is, however, that you never move on to the implementation stage.

When you are on the second level, you have started implementing your ideas and have made a few sales, but here you might also get trapped. There is a temptation to try several ideas at once and you come up with many tools and programs to help you grow. But the truth is, if you want to get to that third level, you need to simplify by choosing to focus on only one or two things, and then to carefully measure their results. Remember to sign up for our upcoming webinar where you’ll learn a whole lot more, including our business philosophy, the most common mistakes creative entrepreneurs are making and how to get past yourself!

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Think Inside the Box: Constraints Drive Creativity

If you have not already heard of the law of diminishing returns, it states that everything we do is on a bell curve and as we do more work so the results improve. But once we pass a certain point or amount of work, the results begin to lessen and the work we do becomes less effective. After a certain amount of time and effort, our results can even start to decline and drop off to a point below our earlier work! The main lesson we want to extrapolate here is that more work equals better results up to a certain point.

As we work on projects, we have to find these points and understand how far our effort is going. We have to be able to apply this theory to our business otherwise we run the risk of shooting ourselves in the foot through overwork and time-wasting. We need to focus on productivity, how to spend our time wisely and when we are done with a specific task. Learning the answer to this question might take time but we can start to notice patterns if we are sensitive to this dynamic. This law will apply to physical as well as digital work and remember that your creativity and energy is subjective, we never really know for sure, but we can work on our mindset and perspective to minimize these negative effects.

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Boss Talk: Did You Have Any Fears When You First Started Your Business?

We’re pumped to do another Boss Talk episode today! Our question for today is, “Did you have any fears when you first started your business?” Before we jump into this though, it’s worth mentioning that Emylee has a habit of conveniently forgetting all the negative memories of an experience, looking back at them with rose-colored spectacles! Nonetheless, we’re talking about fears and what it was that drove our decisions in those early days of starting our own businesses.

Many factors played a role in those decisions, including long-distance relationships and being desperate to move closer to our families. In this episode we share some of our fresh-out-of-college experiences trying to navigate new phases in life and trying to figure out what our next steps would be. We also chat about confidence and what motivated us to start our own businesses and the many considerations involved, so join us to find out more about our early days as startup entrepreneurs!

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They're More Successful Than Me Because... (And Other Excuses We Tell Ourselves)

“I don’t have enough time”, “I don’t know the right people”, “I don’t have enough money.” There are a lot of excuses we make for not being or most successful selves. We’ve all used them at least once, or have heard other people use them, over and over again! But how true are they really? This is a conversation we have recently been having and we wanted to bring you in on it. In this episode, we are talking about the excuses we make for not achieving success in our business and the things we like to tell ourselves about how others achieved their success.

We start off by looking at geographical location and how the attitudes toward money and status can influence the way we start to define and articulate our own success. We also discuss the “overnight success” myth and why time is one of the most misunderstood aspect of success. We also want to take this opportunity to remind you that you don’t need to know all the hot shots, or even know much at all for that matter, to be successful. The most successful people are great learners who focused, made the time, didn’t blame their kids and tried! If you are finding yourself constantly making excuses about your business, or the lack thereof, then this is the episode to listen to for a fresh perspective and a kick up the rear!

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Beginner Business Series – Part 1: Adopting a Profit First Mentality

We’re excited to be doing something new over the next few episodes and this is thanks to all your amazing feedback! A question came up inside the TCC community, “Where are the podcasts for brand new business owners? Business owners who haven’t made anything yet or haven’t got off the ground yet?” Over the next few episodes, we’re going to be sharing our five-part Beginner Business Series (BBS). We’re going to be asking you to share your homework, takeaways and insights inside our community using the hashtag #bbs.

If you’ve been in business for a while, a lot of these things are going to be in review for you, but it might also be an opportunity for you to go back and solidify a foundation. Regardless of where you’re at or what industry you are in, you should definitely be listening. If you are brand new and wondering where to even begin, this is an awesome place to start! In this episode, we are going to help you identify your skills and unique strengths, your why and your goals and help you discover your potential, most viable product or skill that you can start putting out this very week! Making you nervous? The good news is that this is something you already have!

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From Mama to Work-from-Home Freelancer with Micala Quinn of The Live Free Mama Movement

Today on the show, we welcome Micala Quinn. Micala is a wife, mom, teacher, lifelong learner and founder of The Live Free Mama Movement. She helps moms launch their freelance business using the skills they already have so they can have more freedom, flexibility and financial stability. Our lives were very similar to Micala’s since she had worked for a bit, started freelancing from home and then started a business. A lot of moms want to work from home in the freelance world, but don’t know where to start. It can be daunting and overwhelming, but not if you know where to start. This is where Micala comes in.

In this episode, Micala shares how a mom can do things from home to create a sustainable business. If you’re out there wondering, “What is the thing I can do to bring in some extra cash-dollar bills this month?” this is the episode you want to listen to. Today, we share so many brainstorming activities and questions you can ask yourself to help pull those skills into a profitable service you can actually charge for. If you’ve ever had an interest in freelancing or VA work, this episode will sure as hell give you some ideas.

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Starting from Scratch: Fears & Fumbles While Growing Our Side Hustles

The cat’s out the bag! We have just started our own new businesses. Two different businesses. Two different industries. And we’re building them completely on our own. Emylee’s latest side-hustle is selling her own hand-painted artworks online and Abbie has started an MLM business with Young Living products. In addition to TCC, we wanted to start something completely on our own and as exciting as it is – truthfully, we’re both a hot mess and are grappling with so many aspects of product-based entrepreneurship that we didn’t even expect as mentors in this field.

Inside this episode, you will find out more about our latest side hustles, why we started them, how we are growing them and the many challenges we are currently facing in this new terrain. If you are a compulsive entrepreneur or are in the same boat of juggling your many business passions, then this is definitely an episode you’ll relate to. So take a listen, find out how we are going about our new ventures and most importantly, know you are NOT alone!

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Delegation, Growth, and the Million Dollar Mindset with Stacy Tuschl

Today on the podcast, we have Stacy Tuschl, who is a high-performance business coach, mentor, bestselling author, speaker, and creator of the She’s Building Her Empire Podcast and Community. Stacy helps purpose-driven women entrepreneurs and business owners break through their challenges and operate at their highest potential. She is highly passionate and she loves helping women unapologetically be themselves and create a legacy they are proud of.

Stacy is pretty awesome, and on the podcast, she is going to talk about her journey of building a business to over seven freaking figures, all from her parents’ backyard. Today, you are hearing about that journey and how she finally felt like she needed to pour her energy somewhere else and build a personal brand on top of that seven-figure business. There is definitely a lot you are going to learn today! We are talking about being a mompreneur, juggling all the things in your life, self-doubt, confidence in your business, and so much more. So dive in, get started, and give this one a listen.

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The Consequences of Finding Joy in Your Work

Finding joy in your work is a wonderful thing. It can energize you, further your drive, and help you push through challenging tasks and deadlines. But it can also have a detrimental effect.

Many of us have fallen into the trap of trying to get all our meaning and joy from one source, whether it’s your partner or your company. The problem with that is that it puts untenable pressure on the people we love the most. It can also cause us to neglect other parts of ourselves, leaving us devastated and adrift when we no longer have the partner, or job, that defined our identity.

Today on the show we delve into the consequences of finding joy in our work. We discuss some of the common traps people fall into when their actions aren’t in alignment with what they want, and how to do the difficult, introspective work of uncovering our true needs and aspirations. Tuning in you’ll learn about the biggest obstacles we’ve seen clients face, and how we can help you overcome them. We also discuss how to find more time in your life and identify exactly what you want for your future self!

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How Team Boss Project Lives in Our Life-First Value

Our very first absolute priority when it comes to our business values, is building a business that is life first. To us, that means that our business structure reflects the season we are in. Seasons can be short or long, but they are intentional choices. You can choose to work full time, build a business, and still respect life first.

What this looks like for us, is allowing ourselves plenty of flexibility even while working full-time hours. When we chose to do business this way, we structured our days in a way where we could still prioritize family and life over work. How it looks is not the point, how it is communicated, and how it is honored, are! Life first looks completely different in every different context - what our team looks like when we’re working, what our team looks like when we are not working. Open and early communication is the essential building block for a life-first business to thrive.

We’ve made it a rule that every single employee has to take both their birthday and their anniversary off from work. That’s just one example of how we’ve built the life-first value into our business, and we’re proud of it! Building a life-first business can look any way you want it to, and it can be the little things, and ultimately our goal is that you have the freedom to choose what you want to prioritize and how that works.

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Part 1: How to Develop an Experimental Mindset (The Mind Work it Actually Takes)

How many times have you struggled to make a decision in business out of fear that you’d make the wrong decision? What if instead, you viewed every decision as an opportunity to learn, rather than succeed or fail? Today on the show we unpack what it means to have an experimental mindset, how to foster that for yourself and within your team, and how it can free you from regret and help you make decisions that will help you learn and grow.

Tuning in you’ll get a taste of what we've been chatting about with our clients inside the incubator; from how unrealistic expectations can warp your mindset, to how to figure out what you really want. We’ve seen so many of our clients struggle to react to success and failure and as a result, we wanted to discuss examples of actionable strategies. Learn what you can implement within your company and your team so that if you're in a similar situation, you have strategies to help you adapt to any situation!

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Do You Have a Cognitive Bias Towards Action or Thinking?

When you’re trying to express a complex psychological feeling or event, but you aren’t familiar with the agreed-upon terms that experts use to describe it, the experience can be incredibly isolating. Today on the show we discuss a recent conversation we encountered that unpacks the differences between having a cognitive bias towards either action or thinking, and the consequences of that bias.

Anyone who has spent some time listening to our show will likely be familiar with the terms being a ‘doer’ or a ‘be-er’. Tuning in, you’ll hear us discuss how being a doer correlates with a cognitive bias towards action, while being a be-er strongly resembles having a cognitive bias towards thinking. We also cover some of the traps that action takers can fall into, including hasty decision-making and why you need to be able to take action while also making time to process and strategize. Tune in for a breakdown of these fascinating topics, as well as insights into some of the steps you can take to shape your cognitive bias!

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Bootstrap, Burnout, and Beyond: The 3 Phases of Your Service Based Business

The things we hear all the time are either, “I’m doing all the right things but I don’t necessarily know what to focus on next. I don’t know which lever to pull next and I don’t know why I’m feeling so overwhelmed.” Or, “This is so fun and easy! How do I set up myself for success in the future? How do I maintain this and keep growing?” We find that everyone’s always trying to look ahead, yet what’s truly beneficial is understanding the phase that you’re currently in order to clock why things are going well, where they’re going wrong, and what you need to do to move into the next phase. What we forget is that pitfalls are inevitable and that, as things grow, there are going to be roadblocks, hesitations, and frustrations. We are all bound to feel stuck at some point or another we want to assure you that this feeling is normal (and necessary) and that we can help you to get out of it! In this episode, we tackle the three phases we see every service-based business owner move through, fill you in on how we really feel about burnout, and share our greatest wish for every single service-based business owner out there.

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meet your host

I don’t believe there’s one right way to build a business.

I’m your host, Abagail Pumphrey. And I’m dedicated to supporting online businesses.

I’m here to help you build business your way: one that supports not only the life you have but the life you want. I’m on a personal mission to help you become financially free.

I’m talking about all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a 7-figure online business. I’m here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way, whether you’re creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business.

I want to hear your hot takes, your biggest takeaways, or the genius ideas that pop in your head as you’re listening to the show.

My DMs are always open on Instagram, so head over and introduce yourself so I can get to know you!

DM Me on Instagram

Listener Love

paigeamberbacani
Abagail, thank you SO MUCH for this fresh passion! I can hear the genuine excitement in your voice over what is working well for you right now and what you have overcome in the past! Your resilience is truly contagious and I am so grateful for the knowledge that you freely share!
GoodGood Investing
An amazing podcast! From business strategy and systemization, to motivation and inspiration, The Strategy Hour really does cover it all! We love this podcast to bits!
Genevieve0721
I wanted to reach out and let you know how much I’m enjoying your podcast. It’s truly amazing and I’ve learned so many valuable tips and insights on how to scale a business without burning out. Your content is truly awesome and I appreciate you sharing it with us listeners!
Mezar C
Your podcasts are fantastic! The latest episodes highlighing your journey from graphic design to various marketing roles is truly motivating for aspiring entrepreneuers unsure of their career paths. Awesome content!
Fabi Paolini
Love your podcast, you bring so much value to your listeners. Thank you!
Josuediazv
I really enjoyed the episode that covered the importance of building a highly engaged and motivated team to help company scale and grow. I would highly recommend this podcast to everyone interested in learning practical business strategies to start, scale, and grow a business.
Ashao FreeSky
Super valuable. Abagail provides simple and actionable advice for growing your business. Her episodes are super practical. I love how grounded and down-to-earth she is. You can tell she genuinely cares about helping. I definitely recommend giving the podcast a listen!

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Software & Services We Swear By

Meet Our Partners

The links below are affiliate links. We receive a commission (at no additional cost to you) when you purchase through these links.

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Digital Product Jumpstart

Build your list and grow your revenue at the same time!

I’ve kept these details to myself for far too long. I’m ready to spill everything and give you the exact steps that’ve helped me generate tens of thousands of qualified leads and MILLIONS in low-ticket digital product sales. I won’t just show you what I did, I’ll teach you how you can do it too.

Learn More