We are bringing you a series! It’s going to be a four-part series dropping on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next two weeks. In it, we’re going to be covering the four things that a service provider must get right. The reason why we’re launching this particular series is because we’re surprised, year after year, about the lack of higher-level resources geared towards the tens of thousands of people who listen to this show, namely established business owners who are looking to figure out their next move for their business, so that they can level up. So, we’re creating those foundational resources for you in the form of a podcast series. We’re so excited to dig in, come join us!

The theme of needing more time is a common one that we are seeing amongst our clients, which is why we started off today’s conversation with a discussion about gardening and candle making! Our thoughts on this topic have changed a lot over the last 6 months because of the unexpected outcomes that we’ve witnessed, and we want to share them with you.

Our advanced training is called “How to Double Your Income by Working 20 Hours a Week or Less.” Service providers, we see you, we know you’re burnt out, and our goal is to help you make more money and get your time back! Our strategy works, we have proof through the lives that have been changed as a result, so come and see how it can change your life too!

As owners and CEOs, we’ve made plenty of mistakes, but we’ve also learned a lot from them. In today’s episode, we discuss some of the mistakes we’ve made, as well as the errors we’ve seen TONS of CEOs make over the years. So, if you recognize any of these in yourself, don’t worry, you’re in good company! Tuning in, you’ll hear us break down the 7 most prominent red flags and toxic behaviors that continue to happen in business. Learn how to recognize them, why they happen, and the tiny course corrections you can make to solve them.

The things that we are pointing out today are based on specific lessons we’ve observed throughout our careers. We’ve seen these errors play out in various ways, from friends who have needed to course-correct, to mistakes that we have inadvertently made in our own business. We’re taking this as an opportunity to share our knowledge so that you can become aware of these potential pitfalls and hopefully skip them altogether!

The interesting thing about any mistake is that it’s not always detrimental when you do it at the beginning, but holding onto it can sometimes prevent you from future success! At a recent conference we spoke at, we were asked about some of the biggest mistakes we have made in our business; and one of the things we highlighted was structuring our business according to task-based activities, rather than bringing in a team of permanent employees with outcome-based deliverables.

We recently brought in an amazing cohort of clients inside of the incubator. Throughout that process we’ve read hundreds of applications, and there are two sentences that we found as a recurring theme and desire within these applications which we really want to respond to. We’ve got a lot to say on this topic, and we feel very passionately about it, so get ready for the rant! People have this elusive idea that they want to earn a passive income. In other words, they want to earn money in their sleep.

There is a version of this that does exist, and we’ll happily share that with you, but passive income isn’t what you think it is. If you believe that if you’re not chasing passive income then you’re doing business wrong, you need to listen to this. The way passive income is framed in the online industry is toxic, and can cause you to miss out on so many great opportunities. We know that passive income sounds like a perfect scenario, but today you’ll hear why it’s really not all that cracked up to be!

Put your socks on, pour a fresh cup of coffee and tune into this conversation with Parker Stevenson. If you’re a service provider who wants to make more and work less, today’s episode is for you! It’s not that we’re comparing one business model against the other, but rather, we’re considering an informed perspective on the 1:1 and 1:many approaches to business.

This episode comes with a bit of a trigger warning. We're both feeling a bit nervous about this one, which has never happened before. It's based on the conversations that we have privately with each other when we see peers, clients, and students making the wrong assumptions about the topic that we're going to talk about today. We decided that we're doing a disservice by only having those conversations privately. What lights us up is to impact others and to change their lives and to have small business owners be financially and soulfully fulfilled, and to do that we feel that we have to share our take on this.

If this conversation doesn't apply to you, you can skip it. If you are already crushing it and your business is made up primarily of courses and digital products and you're thriving and meeting your financial goals, then this conversation isn't for you. However, if you started as a service-based business owner and have added on courses and digital products and you have struggled financially and stressed yourself out because of it, then this episode is most definitely for you!

Today on the show we are joined by the wonderful and inspiring Kathleen Cutler! Kathleen has worked behind the scenes on multiple million dollar online stores with her main area of focus being jewelers. She has coached over a hundred different jewelers to help them achieve their business goals and get their products selling online, but Kathleen’s expertise extends so much further than just jewelry! She wants to help everyone selling products or even services online to extend the experience of the customer and drive sales through the type connections that you would usually associate with a physical retail space.

Quarantine gave Abagail every excuse to drop any kind of consistency around movement, and now, a full year later, she is trying to get back at it. She has walked three days in a row, and just yesterday Emylee did her first Peloton bike ride in months. After eight minutes in, she felt like she couldn’t do it, but she kept going. But this isn’t what we are going to be talking about today. We are super excited because it’s been a while since we have done an episode like this, where we share a small tweak we made inside our signature program that was uber effective.

It actually kind of blew us away just how much of a difference it made. It's been almost a year since we made this two-phased change. We want to talk to you about it today because if you are offering services or packages and there are deliverables inside those packages that don’t cost you any money but do cost you time, those are sometimes the easiest things to add into a package to add value. There are also instances where you need to re-evaluate what those deliverables are and whether that thing is actually effective, not only for you but your clients as well.

Hello friends! It has been a minute since we have talked about the other businesses we run. We thought it was high time for a little update because Abagail has something new and exciting that she has launched (by the time you hear this it will have been out for a minute). We are going to talk about that but we also think there have been some decisions that we have made very intentionally in our side businesses that we want to break down the logistics behind.

We share these things with you, first of all, because it is fun to chat about, but it is also fair for you guys to hear this part of the process because it gives you a look behind the curtain of something new and growing. It also shows you the reality of how a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners are, which is multi-passionate!

It's 2021, and we are diving into our profit reports. If you are new to this segment of the show, we really like to dive deep into what it takes to run an online business while avoiding comparison and not having to question your every move. So, instead of sharing dollars and cents, we share percentages, and we share strategies. We also dive into sharing behind-the-scenes thoughts and actions so you can see what makes sense for you without having to worry about whether you are in the right place and questioning where you’re at.

We have a good accompanying episode to this one, where we break down the strategies we are trying to tackle for this quarter, and more specifically, we break down the accompanying expenses to those strategies. So if you want to hear more about them, definitely listen to that episode too. Now, without further ado, let’s dive into today’s profit report.

Okay, we are finally here for the episode we have said we were going to give you. Today we are going to share a sneak peek behind the scenes of what we are doing and what we are focussing on for Q1, including not just big projects, but also some exciting shifts we’ve had in our team! If you have been following us for any length of time, you know we do a big planning dream-dump and break down our quarters into these “sexy chunks,” as we refer to them.

Historically speaking, Q1 has always been a time for us to reevaluate and to really clean up and optimize our existing systems. That’s worked for us because, in terms of outside obligations, we are home the most in Q1. We also have the least going on with others in our business and we can really focus on what’s going on internally. It’s a great time to hole in and not go anywhere, especially because it’s the worst part of winter. So when we have no choice but to be cooped up inside, we use it as an opportunity to perfect everything for the rest of their year so that when spring blooms, we can come out of our shells ready and prepared. Join us today and get the three-step blueprint to our 2021 Q1 masterplan.

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.

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!

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.