Happy Birthday to us (cue birthday song). Did you know Think Creative Collective just turned two? We are worried now, because the you know the terrible two’s, does that happen in business too? We certainly hope not! We want to tell you everything we’ve worked on, everything that’s kinda worked for us, some stats to get you familiar with how things have been going and talk a little bit about the future of TCC.

Also, we have opened and started and closed seven businesses together, so this ain’t our first rodeo, babes. It might be our first rodeo together and our most successful business, but we have been in so many other businesses and we have been through all the ups and downs. So we get it, we get it all. Want to find out how we have made this business work? 

We are here for another launch breakdown, and we hope you are as excited as we are! Today we are breaking down our second Rock Your Biz launch. We are giving you the inside scoop and, believe me, it’s something you’ll want to hear. We learned a lot and we have a lot of stats to cover with you today because we like sharing the nitty gritty details, but you already know that!

In case you are brand spanking new and don't know what the heck Rock Your Biz is, it’s a program that we opened and then closed just this month. We ran a free four-day challenge to kind of warm people up to the concept of what was going to be so good once we opened the doors. We had three webinars and it was awesome. To say we were the most baffled by this launch, ever, would be an understatement and babes, you’re hearing it all here first. So keep listening to hear more!

Today on the podcast we have the numbers queen Geily Romero. Geily is a financial consultant and business strategist. She has some amazing knowledge all about getting your business financially stable, setting goals and growing your business. On today’s show we’re going over one of our favorite things: profit and loss statements!

We are talking numbers and all the things you need to do to get setup so you can start analyzing the financial side of your business, what mistakes you might be making and how you can start paying more attention to this very important piece of your business. We are also giving you some free solutions on how to make it all happen! Yeah, you heard that right, so stay tuned!

We have a crowd favorite on the podcast today: Megan Stone, owner of Sweet Chubby Cheeks. Megan is a proud Momma of two wonderful kiddos. Her designs are inspired by her daughter, and the need she had to find quality outfits for photo sessions and headbands for everyday wear. She quickly found that other moms had the same desire and Sweet Chubby Cheeks was born!

Today we are getting super deep, super real, a little personal, crossing those those boundaries of what you should and shouldn’t talk about. Yeah, we are talking all about when your spouse is your employee and how the dynamics of that really works. We are talking about “retiring” your husband / wife and how Megan has been able to successfully do so. She is giving us an idea of the work that she took to get there and some of the stumbling blocks she faced in the beginning. We are diving into it, so keep listening to hear more!

Today we are recording a live version of us going through our monthly review sheet. What we’re really going to talk about is the process and we are going through the entire thing step by step, just as we normally do, so you guys can see it all - how long it takes, what we talk about, what we ask ourselves, what are we looking at, what numbers are we pulling and we’re doing it in real time. We’ve pulled up the websites that we usually gather data from but we haven't crunched the numbers yet. We are doing it on air so you guys can see realistically how all this works.

It’s August review and we use our worksheets that we’ve created for some awesome students of ours and our community which are available in both The Follow Through Method and Rock Your Biz. We are going through our typical review of what we would do at the end of a month and then planning for the following month. This episode might be a bit different to listen to. We are testing it so do let us know if you love it or hate it at the end of it. So keep listening to hear how all this works!

Today we have our friend and ultimate boss babe, or should we say, legal babe, Christina Scalera on the show. We are super excited to get into this episode with you guys because today we are going to be chatting about something us creatives (honestly) don’t always think about. Now you’re wondering what that is, right?

Well, Christina helps creative entrepreneurs and wedding professionals make lots of money doing what they love. She is also out to cause a Ruckus™ in the legal world with legal marketing that doesn't suck. Today she is here to help us, creatives, make sure that we are protected and making smart and safe decisions online, especially in the world of collaboration.

Holy moly guacamole! It’s episode 100! On today’s milestone episode, we have one of the most integral behind-the-scenes members on The Strategy Hour: Nicholette von Reiche. You might not hear her (or see her), but Nicholette is always buzzing around in the background as our business manager, graphics guru and tech ninja. Today, we’re talking all about growing a team, the state of TCC, what’s coming up for the podcast and all about the future of the biz.

We want to break down the TCC journey and let you know who has a role in the business. We can lift the curtain a bit to show you that it isn’t just us in here – but that it was just us for a long time! We have laid a lot of foundations over the course of our first business year and if you are currently laying the foundations in your own business, hopefully this will give you a glimpse into your future. We’re so excited about our first 100 episodes and we can’t wait to do a hundred more! Send the champagne, people! And let’s get into some strategy.

Lately, we have gotten some questions from our students, audience members and community about how we have evolved in our course creation journey, and so we decided to take you back. Not all the way back, not necessarily to our client days, but at least from the beginning stages of creating our first course all the way through to today. We’ll tell you what has changed and how we have been able to grow and better serve our community.

The purpose behind doing this is to really showcase to you all that you can start small (we did).  Nothing has to be perfect, just run with something and run the heck out of it until you add on something else. Dive into this episode if courses are something you’re interested in trying and learn from our mistakes. Keep listening so you can take some of our advice and see some bomb-ass results a year into it applying it.

Today we are joined by Tara Bosler of T. Bosler Writing. She is a copywriter, y’all, for creatives just like you. We are super excited for you to learn from Tara and we want you to have your ears perked up because there’s a funny noise in this audio that we are not going to cut out and we want you to try to guess what it is before she tells us. Because to me, it doesn’t sound anything like what it actually is. Suspenseful!

Inside this episode, we are talking about how to be authentic in your writing and how to use your conversations with not only your friends, but also your clients, as intel to use on the things that you spit out into the world. We are talking about whether or not it’s okay to be grammatically incorrect and we get into some details about how to hire a copywriter. We know this sounds simple, but Tara breaks it down to make it even better for you inside your business. We can’t wait for you to jump in and start writing some copy, and we are super excited for you to listen to this episode!

When people think of hiring, they often think that it is a complicated, convoluted, crazy process. But the truth is, it really doesn’t have to be. On today’s show, we break down the logistics of hiring into five basic action steps. First, by recognizing the gap in your business. Second, by putting your feelers out into the hiring marker. Then third, once you’ve got your list, narrowing it down to a promising employee selection. Next, negotiating pricing and then finally, locking it down with a contract. See, not too complicated, right?

Today we’re going to give you the inside scoop into how we do this in our own business as well as give you the resources to enable you to free up some time, protect yourself and your employees and get everyone on the same page and #winning! Whether you’re an employer looking to hire or an employee looking to be hired, take a listen for some tips for a more empowering experience.

Well, ya’ll know by now that we are pretty much transparent about everything we learn in our business. We immediately take it and we turn around and teach it because we don’t like to hold back. We are over-sharers by nature. You get the good, bad, and the ugly with us and that’s what we are doing today; over-sharing again. Today, we wanted to dive in deeper about the business roadblocks that we have faced.

At the beginning, we consumed a lot of content from people who we knew and who we trusted, and who we saw were doing big things. One of the important pieces that not everyone talks about are the mistakes that they have made in their business and what held them back and prevented them from making more money, faster. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We are just human and we make mistakes like everybody else and the thing is, if we could do anything, we want to help you avoid them or at least make them less bumpy, less crazy, less long and drawn out, and help you find the solution quickly. So let’s jump in and get started!

Today on the podcast, we have Amy Northard CPA, accountant for creatives. Amy has been a friend of ours for what feels like centuries at this point, and we have known her longer than we have known each other. She is awesome and makes everything sound so simple that you think maybe you could do it yourself, even though you can’t. Amy is so knowledgeable about all things taxes, bookkeeping, making things stress free, and making things easy to understand.

You are going to learn a lot in today’s episode, like what type of business you should be and how to even form it. She also shares her favorite apps, tools, and softwares to keep track of all your numbers. We go over the questions you should ask before you are ready to hire a CPA, things that you guys are forgetting to deduct, and stuff that you actually cannot deduct, that you might have thought you could. We also talk about the icky quarterly taxes and how to make that process super simple for you moving forward so that you are not scared and stressed out come tax season. So just relax, settle in, and give this one a listen.

Today on the podcast, we have our good friend Steph Crowder from Courage and Clarity
Podcast and Fizzle. If you have not yet seen Fizzle and its amazing membership platform full of
incredible courses for small business owners, you guys should definitely check it out. Steph is
one of our podcasting buddy friends. We meet with Steph and a couple of other ladies, twice a
month and chat all things podcasting, growth tactics, marketing, guest ideas, and all that good
stuff in our podcasting mastermind. She is an incredible human being, and we love her to
pieces. Steph is super knowledgeable, super kind, and we can’t wait for you to learn from her
today.
 

Inside this episode, Steph is giving you a step by step of all the things you need to do to
interview potential customers in order to validate your kick ass business idea. We are also
getting a behind the scenes look of a thriving membership site, and Steph is talking all about
creating amazing customer service in your business and the step-by-step creation process of
creating courses inside of Fizzle. It’s a great episode, we get really in depth especially on that
membership piece and the business idea piece, so we are really excited for you to dive in and
take away some awesome knowledge bombs from Steph.

Inside today’s episode, we are talking all about launching and specifically a launch we just had where we made $37,000 in a matter of a week. We’re going to talk to you all about what changed, what we did differently, some systems we added on to try our new take on Facebook ads, and exactly how we got the results we did. We’re even going to dive into some data and what worked and what didn’t.

We have been waiting to do this episode because we wanted to come back with all the final results and it would be helpful for you guys to know perhaps how we launched before so you can really see the value of the changes that we have made and how we approached it differently this time around. Really, it comes down to two things that we changed, so stay tuned as we dive into the details in this episode.

Today, we are super excited to bring our friend Danielle Liss to the show. She is a partner over at Hashtag-Legal and she focuses on legal issues for online business owners. Danielle has extensive experience negotiating contracts and interpreting FTC guidelines, and her experience has given her intimate knowledge of the challenges facing influencer networks and social media professionals today.

In this episode we talk all about business formation, contracts, website policies, intellectual property, copyrights, trademarks, and she may even give us the straight talk about some of the things we have not yet done inside our own business. So, regardless of where you are in your business; whether you’re  just getting started or already have your own multiple six figure business, get ready, because we promise you that you are going to learn something today!