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.
Listen & Subscribe
Find us wherever you listen to podcasts
Our Episodes
Goal Crusher Club – Part 3: How to Figure Out What to Pay Yourself
Welcome to Part Three of the Goal Crusher Club Series! Today on the podcast, we are talking about the fun side of business – getting paid! Woohoo! Getting paid should be an exciting and rewarding part of business; but who knew that it could be the cause of so much anxiety and confusion, right? We want to give you a little break here today and share with you what we have used in the past to help us define what to pay ourselves as business owners and how that works for us today since our business has grown. If you have severe anxiety around money, we totally understand the fear of not wanting to pay yourself.
A lot of the time people are either afraid money is going to disappear or it is supposed to be allocated toward something else or are just simply feeling that they don’t deserve that money. This is something to be aware of going into this episode but for the most part, we are going to be diving into the different formulas you can use in order to figure out what to pay yourself. We will also be discussing helpful tools to help you with payroll, saving for taxes, saving for retirement, how to separate your income into different bank accounts and what determines a “reasonable” salary.
The Inside Details of How to Become an Influencer with Mae Karwowski of Obvious.ly
Today on the podcast we welcome Mae Karwowski, the Founder and CEO of Obvious.ly, a technology-driven influencer marketing platform that launched in 2014. In this episode, we are talking all about building a business from the ground up. Mae shares how she scaled her company to over 20 employees without any outside funding, as well as her experience working as a woman in the tech industry today. But for the most part, we really hone in on influencer marketing; what it’s really like working in that space as an agency and how you, as an influencer or brand, can work with an agency like Obvious.ly and start making a little money!
Mae is an absolute badass with heaps of insight, tips, tricks and advice. The influencer marketing landscape has truly evolved over the past four years and Mae gives us an overview of how influencer marketing started, the progressions it has made, and where it is today. This is a really exciting and rapidly growing marketing road to be on today and we can’t wait to share what Mae has to say on this. If you are a brand looking to partner with influencers, or an influencer looking to partner with brands – then you’re going to love this one!
Goal Crusher Club – Part 2: Aligning Projects with Your Goals
Today’s Goal Crusher Club episode is all about aligning your projects with your goals. The entire purpose of this episode is to get you achieving the things on your dreamy to-do list faster. We know that so many of you sit there twiddling your thumbs, hoping to get more stuff done, but are not getting more stuff done! We know it’s not because you’re not willing to get stuff done; the issue is that coming up with an end goal just feels very definite and restricting, right? Often, if we don’t have a clue what our end goal should be, then we don’t know where to start, we don’t know what goals and tasks to prioritize and we don’t know which opportunities to follow. We feel you, and we’re here to help you really hone in, define and focus on what it is you’re working towards.
In this episode, we are going to be giving you great tips to help you set your goals and break them down into small projects and even tinier daily tasks. We are also going to help you prioritize your tasks throughout the day and give you some helpful tips on how to say no to the often distracting opportunities that arise. We know you are a creative, but we also want to see your creativity turn into a sustainable and profitable business – so if we’re mean, it’s only because we care. It’s time to knuckle down and get your booty in check, so start crushing your goals today and take a listen.
March 2018 Review
Today on the podcast we are bringing you another monthly review session. This time around we will be taking a look at March 2018: everything that happened, everything that didn’t happen, why things happened and ultimately, what this all means! More specifically, we’ll be walking you through the nerve-wracking spending freeze that we had to place on the company this month, as well as the goal that changed course, how we quickly adapted and implemented the new goal which led to our exciting new course you see today – The Goal Crusher Club.
We’ll also be sharing with you how we shifted to a new email service provider and the benefits of getting your systems in order, even when it draws you away from those money-making activities. We take a dig at the areas we want to improve on, like our personal internal leadership capabilities, our upcoming hotel spa strategy and why we need to have weekly check-ins with one another regarding our individual decision-making progress. In addition, we have some sexy new numbers to dazzle you with and will be sharing why our April affirmation is to realign. By the end of this episode, you will certainly have seen our flaws and be reminded that we, of course, are only human too. We know that you are coming up against these challenges in your own business and we are here to tell you that sometimes, you’ve just got to live and let be!
January and February Monthly Reviews (We Learned Something MAJOR During These Months)
Today on the show, we are bringing you a two-in-one monthly review session. We know we are always telling you to check your data, but the truth is, we forgot. January slipped away and then February slipped away and before we knew it we had the monthly reviews way off of our minds! Even we made mistakes, the upside is that you guys get to learn from them! Yay! So, even if it is March and you also haven’t done last month’s report yet, that’s okay. You can give yourself some grace and do yours with us here today.
In this episode, we are diving straight in to our monthly business review sheets which you can find within the Follow Through Method. We’ll be going through our goals and whether we accomplished them or not, as well as our numbers for our various social media pages, our email list and our website. We’ll also be taking a look at increases and decreases in sales and talking about the importance of allowing your goals to pivot and be tweaked. So, grab a pen and paper, dig out the calculator and let’s start collecting some data.
Planning for Worst Case Scenarios
For those of you who don’t already know Emylee – welcome to her anxious life. She is the type of person who can tell you where every exit in a building is, how to stop drop and roll in case of a fire, and where to hide in case a tornado suddenly appears on route to the mall. In business, Emylee is the kind of person that likes to go through every single worst case scenario. She always has a back up plan… and a backup plan for the backup plan. Emylee is truly the queen of the backup plan, and it turns out that this can be a super helpful attribute to have in a business partnership.
This episode is about planning for the things that you can never plan for. It’s about answering those difficult “what if” questions. It’s about securing your business for the future and the reassurance that this brings to your life. For those of you who are single business owners, we’re not sure you’ve thought of planning for worst case scenarios and exactly how to do that. So in today’s episode, we’re going to be sharing our experiences and the reasons we have made planning for worst case scenarios an integral part of our overall business strategy. We discuss buy-sell agreements, the various insurance options you have, the tough questions you need to ask yourself today and how you can effectively plan for the worst, in the best kind of way. Take a listen!
Leaving a Legacy and Making an Impact with Kelly Roach of Kelly Roach Coaching
Today on the podcast we welcome Kelly Roach. Kelly is a national bestselling author, the host of the podcast Unstoppable Success Radio and the CEO of her own coaching company, Kelly Roach Coaching. Kelly has NFL cheerleading experience, Fortune 500 executive status and today is “bringing it” with strategy, mindset, wellness and everything in between that will help you build the legacy you want to leave behind. In this episode, we talk about how to create a legacy, what a legacy looks like for you and the impact tiny everyday decisions have on the future of your business. Our episodes usually center around getting a business off the ground, but the question we’re asking today is, what do you do after you’ve launched?
Often when we think of legacy, we think of something grand, something awe-inspiring, something world-renowned. But the truth is, no matter how small your business is, you can leave a legacy and according to Kelly, this is the calling and responsibility of all entrepreneurs. Kelly really unpacks what leaving a legacy means, and for creative entrepreneurs especially, this is super helpful to hear. Kelly gives us some great ideas on how we can create a more sellable business and stresses the importance of wellness and self-care in legacy building. If you are wanting to make an impact in the world with your business after you sell it, move on, or retire, then this is definitely an episode for the you of today and for the you of tomorrow!
A Roundup of Stuff We're Digging Right Now (In Life & Business)
Today on the show we are sharing all the things that we are digging right now. Things that we love, things that bring us happiness, things that make our lives easier, things that are guilty pleasures and everything in between. From handmade clogs from Sweden, to crime thrillers, to kombucha and shipping hacks – this is just a fun little break between all the hardcore business bootcamping and emotional trail runs that we have just about almost every other episode!
Today we are diving into the most marvelously random list: some are products, some are services, some are just things that we like to do – minus the sponsors or affiliates! These are things we are recommending because we genuinely enjoy them. We are sharing ten things each, so a total of twenty, epic random things we are just digging! We hope you’ll find them interesting or inspiring, entertaining or insightful. We hope that you try some of them and hopefully dig them too. Take a listen and let us know if you do!
How to Build a Business that Leaves a Legacy with Lauren Taylor of The Letter Mag
Today on the show we welcome Lauren Taylor. Lauren is the founder of The Letter; an annual mag that inspires women to live their best lives. She is also a content creator, brand ambassador, has partnered with empowering brands like Aerie and Abercrombie and has done amazing things in both her writing, photography and now filming for her YouTube channel. When we think about a social media influencer, we tend to think of someone who has five million followers! But this is not necessarily true and this is one of the reasons we are excited to welcome Lauren back on the show.
Lauren was last here over a year ago, way back in episode 23, where we talked about how to collaborate with big brands and being a social media influencer with a small following and why that model works, as proven by Lauren. Today, we catch up with Lauren and dive into some of the results from the strategies she has been implementing into her social media over the last year. We also discuss how to find your purpose and stay true to yourself when big brands come a-knocking and ultimately, how to find joy in what you are doing every single day. We hope you enjoy listening to Lauren as much as we do!
Our $15k Mistake (And How You Can Avoid Making It Yourself)
Today on the show, we’ll be telling you a story about a $15k mistake we just made. We are finally at a place where we are no longer blaming others for this mistake, and we are able to reflect on it and share it with you. So, we are going to talk to you about a concept we had hoped to implement in our business, the mistake we made, the giant role we played in allowing the bad crap to continue happening – and most importantly, how you guys can avoid making the same mistake in your own business!
Our excitement to create a successful, automated funnel in our business last year led us to hire an outside marketing team. After numerous red flags and no deliverables, we eventually had to cut ties with the team and call it a day. But at that point, it was already too late and we were at a $15k loss! In this episode, we explain how we got ourselves into this situation in the first place, exactly what the red flags were, what we should have done differently and how we are going to bounce back from this ever so slight hiccup. In addition, we walk you through the nitty-gritty of contract negotiation, KPI’s and managing the social dynamics of a new team. We hope that you will learn some lessons from our own sad story and takes this as a friendly reminder to always be the BOSS
Copyright, Copy Cats and What Creatives Can Do to Protect Themselves with Autumn Boyd
Today on the show we welcome Autumn Witt Boyd. Autumn is an experienced lawyer who helps ambitious and creative business owners, such as yourself, reach their big scary goals. She owns the law office of Autumn Witt Boyd where she guides online and e-commerce businesses as they grow. She has special expertise in copyright and trademark issues and her firm offers full legal support to creative businesses. Autumn is also the host of The Legal Road Map podcast which teaches business owners to protect their rights and stay out of legal hot water!
A lot of entrepreneurs and business owners tend to shy away from legal conversations, particularly when it comes to copyrights. These situations can get complicated, awkward and are often just downright confusing! But they shouldn’t have to be. This is why we’ve brought Autumn on - to simplify our lives and ensure that we’re all on the right track and protecting our booties! In this episode, you’ll hear more about the biggest legal mistakes that creative and online business owners are making and get some special insights related to copyright, trademarks and dealing with copycats. To top it all off, you’ll get to hear Emylee go off on a tangent about people stealing our sh*t!
What's a CEO Supposed to Be Doing – Our Journey of Figuring It Out
We have both been on a very personal journey to try and figure our sh*t out and a lot of it has had to do with determining what our role is within our own company. So, what does a CEO look like and what is a CEO actually supposed to be doing? This is the golden question we’ll be tackling in today’s episode. The role of CEO looks so different in every company. It is a role that can be completely unique and takes a while to find your groove. So no matter where you are in your own business, the episode will give you additional tools in finding where you belong. Your role as CEO, what you take on and what you don’t, is a personal decision at the end of the day and takes time and a lot of trial and error to figure out. Trust us, we know!
In this episode, we discuss how our role as CEO’s have evolved as we’ve slowly started outsourcing more, dropping certain tasks and hiring more. We also take a look at what other women have said about CEO’s, what their roles should be and how they can be so different. We don’t have it all figured out just yet, but as we said, this is a process and we’re getting there! So no matter where you are in your own business, come with us on this journey as we discuss where we’ve been, where we are, and where we want to be as CEO’s of our own company.
How to set Boundaries in Your Business & Life
Today on the show, we are tackling a topic that has cropped up in a lot of Facebook groups recently, ours included, and it’s a really good one for discussion! The question is, “How the heck do you set, handle and enforce boundaries when you work from home?” Not only with yourself, clients and customers but also if you have a spouse, a partner, or your kids at home. So whatever your situation, we are digging deep and pulling out the good stuff to help you with those boundaries.
In this episode, we share how we managed the transition from working in an office to working from home. We discuss the importance of figuring out your own workflow, setting concrete boundaries with your family and friends and how to communicate them effectively. At the end of the day, you have to manage the expectations of others, ensure your business is respected and at the same time, enjoy the wonderful privileges that come with working from home! We will share with you the challenges we’ve faced and how we have managed these often tricky scenarios, in the hope that this will empower you to crack that whip and lay down the law!
2017 Review: How Much We Made and Where the $ Came From
Today’s episode is all about the 2017 Review – where we share our triumphs and milestones, the bumps on the road, numbers, sexy data and everything in between! 2017 was a big year for us; Penelope was born, we took off all of January and we launched our signature program, The Strategy Academy, twice! We also hosted a ton of webinars and we ran Facebook Ads strategically well for the first time.
We took a total of 12 weeks off, launched the podcast, launched a website and ended up in the Top 15 Business Podcasts on iTunes... And to think that all of that happened in one year is pretty crazy! In this episode, we’ll be giving you an overview of our year, diving into our four main income generators, two biggest costs, two biggest myths and sharing a stat that might just blow your mind! We hope you will extract some of these strategies and use them to analyze your own business year and make empowered decisions as we dance into 2018.
A Quick Update on Our Side Hustles + Other Nonsense
You guys have been knocking on our virtual door saying, “Give us a damn update on your side hustles!” You asked for it, so here it is; the update episode! A couple episodes ago, if you missed it, we talked about our side hustles – why we started them, what they are and how they work. But today’s episode is really just an update on how they are going, where they are going and what’s new. To give you a brief overview, Abbie began an MLM business in essential oils and Emylee began painting again.
Our side hustles grew out of a need to do something creative again and to do something for ourselves outside of TCC. They’ve been a great learning curve and we’re here today to give you a quick lowdown! In this episode, you’ll find out how Abbie’s MLM team has sky-rocked and about the exciting new partnerships in the pipeline for Emylee. We share what we’ve learned thus far from our side hustles and take a casual deviation into a hilarious conversation about bikini boot camps and burning holes in our yoga mats. Talk about a side note.
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!
Listener Love
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.
Host courses, coaching, digital products, memberships, and more on Teachable’s all-in-one platform. Their platform is perfect for businesses who want to create real impact.
Save on Teachable Pro with our link.
Try Teachable >
If you’re looking for an email service provider made with creatives in mind, is simple and intuitive, and has one set price regardless of list size, look no further than Flodesk.
Get 14 days of Flodesk for free with our link.
Try Flodesk >
The power of Adobe is now in a cloud-based design platform. Creating beautiful graphics is easier than ever, with Adobe Font + Stock libraries available in Express.
Get 40% off the CC All Apps Plan.
Try Adobe Express >
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.
Get 30 days of Canva Pro for free with our link.
Try Canva >
Later is our favorite visual-first planning tool for social media. Use it for Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. Plan, schedule, and post with this all-in-one software.
Try Later free for 14 days with our link.
Try Later >
If you’re searching for a platform to house client portals, internal business resources, or even a public landing page, Notion might be the perfect fit for you!
Try Notion for free with our link.
Try Notion >
Unleash the power of chat marketing! ManyChat is a powerful tool that can help you capture leads and sell your digital products in the blink of an eye.
Get ManyChat for free with our link.
Try ManyChat >
SimpleTexting allows you to fire one-off messages, a series of messages in an automation, tag clients, and more, giving your clients a high-touch experience.
Try SimpleTexting for free with our link.
Try SimpleTexting >
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.
Never Miss an Episode
Every week we’ll pop into your inbox to share the latest episodes, business strategies, and epic guests we’ve interviewed.