Ya’ll know we’re on a mission to turn you into a full-time creative entrepreneur who earns a sustainable income from your passion. Because we’ve been on this journey ourselves for the past four years and have helped thousands of people through it, we have seen and heard most, if not all, of the mistakes in the book. While we’ve spoken a great deal about getting your perfectionist or overachieving mindset right, that alone won’t help you to succeed. On a practical level, you need to stop making crucial mistakes, including focusing too heavily on the appearance of your brand, thinking that your audience is a bunch of strangers and convincing yourself that gadgets and systems will get you to where you want to be. Today we unpack each of these common mistakes, so get your notebook and listen up! 

Today on The Strategy Hour we are so happy to be joined by our friend Jill Stanton! Jill is the co-founder of Screw the 9 to 5, where she helps ambitious entrepreneurs quit their day jobs and live out their business dreams. They also have a very popular podcast and through all this work has inspired tens of thousands of people to build thriving businesses and live lives full of meaning and purpose. You can see why we love Jill! This is such a fun conversation, in which we focus on what it means to hire for growth instead of filling spaces. There is a big difference between building a team that actually helps you make more money and just getting bigger. It is such an opportune time to talk to Jill about this as she and her husband have just implemented these changes themselves within the last year! So the results are not all in yet, but it is looking good so far.

No matter how big or small your business is, this episode has lessons for you, many of which can be implemented from day one in order to set yourself up for success. As many of you will have noticed we are getting into the habit of emphasizing profit above all else and this is something we have in common with Jill! We are just so excited to have someone with this much experience in the online business world to share their genius with you. We have so much respect for Jill and Screw the 9 to 5 as she has learned so many lessons and we can all be really grateful that she is here to share these us!

It’s time for another profit report! These are not an excuse to talk about our business – we truly want to arm you with helpful information that you can apply to your business as a full-time creative entrepreneur. Ups and downs are a natural part of any business, so we want to give you a glimpse into our month-to-month profit not so that you might compare your business to ours, but learn from our mistakes and find your own rhythm. We aim for a 30% profit and share what all our expenses are each month and the different sources of income over that period so you get all the details. Today you’ll learn what profit means to us, how our summit sales performed, why you must get hooked up with sponsors, the ins and outs of payment plans, and more! 

We cannot believe we are about to enter into a new decade! It's crazy but it's true, so get ready! This is a bit of an unplanned episode, which is what makes it special. We want to take this chance to share our planning around the new year with all of you, and exactly what we are thinking about accomplishing for our business in 2020. 

This chat will be the build-up to our end of year meetings around wrapping up and looking ahead. Just think of it as an unofficial look inside our minds as we close out another year at Boss Project and The Strategy Hour! So many businesses do not make it past the fifth year and we do not aim to add to this statistic! So feel free to drop in and eavesdrop on a typical meeting between us as we voice our thoughts and ideas going into the last part of 2019!

Today we’re sharing with you our profit report for September. This is such a great opportunity for us to reflect on our business while also giving you a sneak-peek into how this might be applicable to yours. And before you think this is going to be boring – it’s not a traditional income report and we’re not giving you every single figure because it leads to a lot of unnecessary comparisons, disrupting the possibility of learning something. 

In this episode, we’re going to go over what worked and what didn’t, where the money came from and how it left, and what profit was left right at the end. Comparing September’s report with the previous month’s will also be helpful in understanding the unpredictable nature of business and will be a good starting point for getting some new strategies in place.

Today on the podcast we have Braden Drake, a California licensed attorney with a master’s degree in tax law, joining our conversation. He runs an education company that teaches other small business owners how to get the legal and tax stuff in order to ultimately unf*ck your business framework! He’s a pro at sorting out all the accounting and tax mess we make in our businesses, all those things that are totally befuddling to most of us! 

You’ll be happy to hear that he dishes out a lot of great strategy regarding lawyer-y things, and towards the end of our talk, he also gives away an awesome resource. If you need to do some damage control or brush up on your know-how around the sticky issues like choosing the right entity, paying quarterly taxes and avoiding Frankenstein contracts, be sure to tune in! 

We’ve heard from a lot of people that going from contractors to employees is complicated, expensive and overwhelming, so for a long time, we avoided going down that road. But then we started looking into it and considered all the potentially good stuff about having employees, such as having more control over how they spend their time and when they work. On today’s episode, we want to talk about all the things to think about before hiring an employee, because the truth is, it is very different and a much bigger responsibility. 

There are pros and cons to both, though, and that is why we share with you our experience over the last few years, so that you can be prepared for whichever scenario you choose. It’s all about looking at your business and figuring out whether you are in a financial position to take on a full time employee and whether you are prepared to deal with the positives and negatives of each option. Join us for everything you need to know about the people who do work for your business! 

Income reports can be super distracting and set you on a road of comparison, so instead of focusing on the exact dollars, it might be more useful to look at the profit and give you a breakdown of the biggest sources of income as well as the major expenses. Therefore, we are calling it a profit report and we want to ask all of you, even before we start, to DM us feedback – whether this format worked and helped you in your business. 

In this episode, you will hear more about our thought processes around profits and expenses, but it is important to keep in mind that there are many different ways in which to approach this, so we are not suggesting that you replicate exactly what we do. For the sake of transparency, we also want to let all of you in instead of just talking about the topic. We believe sharing the truth about our business will be of much greater value to you than simply giving you a blueprint for what it should look like. The focus should be profit and figuring out what your goal is in this regard is more important than being able to say you are a six-figure business. We’re baring it all today, so don’t miss out! 

Welcome back to the show, everybody! Today we are going to be letting you even further into our business lives! As we continue to grow we are constantly asking ourselves, "What is the content that people want to hear about?" This goal of keeping you entertained, educated, and engaged is very important to us and we have always loved sharing our lives and work with all of you. When we started out, everything we did was fun, fresh, and engaging and it was easy to share this with our listeners in a natural way. As we have grown, things have changed and we have been more considerate in our choices but we want to carry on sharing stuff with you that is exciting, new, and informative. It has always been our best thing, being able to share something about a problem we solved or a strategy we discovered. 

As we enter year four of our biz we have to continue to look for these opportunities when we have had a different reality from where started out and many of our listeners. We want to help you now and set you up for success in the future! We have a feeling there may be some inaccurate perceptions out there of what is happening in our business. You are welcome to DM us on Instagram with your thoughts but we sense people find us less relatable than when we started out and were smaller. There have been challenges in continually connecting with our audience as our situation has changed, our team has grown and so on, but we want, more than anything, to stay relatable to all of you! We actually think we are probably in more similar situations to a lot of you than you may think! All this to say, we have resolved to let you in on some of this and share more of what is going on in our current lives than we have been!

Guess what’s back? Another Boss Project Summit! For those who have not yet joined us for one of these events, it’s basically an amazing, free business conference during which you can wear your PJs while attending in the comfort of your own home. We gather all the best entrepreneurs and business owners to teach you everything they know, from starting an online business to pivoting and scaling, and everything in between. Head to the Boss Project Summit website to sign up and get your virtual ticket. It is happening live August 20-22, 2019, so make a note of that. 

On this episode we give you a quick overview of some of the topics that will be covered and the great sponsors we have for the summit. We also tell you how you should go about getting access to the summit and what an all access pass will allow you to do. So be sure to get with the Boss Project Summit program! 

As your business grows, you might find the need to hire a virtual assistant. How we approach hiring now is very different from what it used to be and getting someone who is the right fit takes a good portion of know-how. It’s a learning curve and a process for sure. The first step is to make sure that you actually need a person and that a well-functioning system or software application is not able to address the need, because that will naturally work out way cheaper! 

When you’ve done your research and figured out that you absolutely do need a human to do the task, you might begin by asking for referrals. But how will you know if this is the right person for the job? Well, on this episode we share some of the greatest advice for hiring a virtual assistant – tips and tricks that you can apply to really any position you need to be filled. So be sure to tune for today’s Strategy Hour Podcast! 

Today we are carrying on with listener questions, so do not forget to send yours in if you have any! You can do this on Instagram or in the Facebook Group, we love to hear your ideas and questions, so go ahead and ask away! Today we are tackling a question on how to keep communication clear, deal fairly with different amounts of input and how to keep a partnership strong and working well. We have talked about this a little before in other episodes, in different contexts, we have looked at the legal side, how we started out, how things have changed, our thoughts on partnership and breaking down our team. But it is high time for an update, so here we go!

Truth be told, we do not really suggest you go out looking for a partnership like ours. We have seen again and again how difficult it can be and how businesses dissolve, we have just been very lucky in the way that we fit together. So this is us sharing our lessons that you can apply to your team in whatever shape or form it is in now or takes in the future. We are sharing some strategies that have worked for us in resolving conflict and sharing the roles of a business and truthfully, it has mostly been really smooth and easy for us, but that is not always the case. So join us as we break down some tools, books, software and ideas that can make it work that much better for you!

Today we are talking about a real hot topic and something we should all be talking about more often! We will be unpacking inclusivity and diversity and our own experiences and the lessons we have learned in this area. We will be drawing mostly from our recent summit and what we took away from the event that we will carry forward. This episode will have actionable strategies and tips about how to invite everyone to your table. We have spoken on this topic in various ways on the podcast before but it definitely deserves a dedicated episode, so we will be discussing community over competition, inclusion in our own company, the speakers we invited to the summit and what to do when something rubs you the wrong way. 

We all have a responsibility to open up these conversations if we are going to make any progress as a society. Do not worry, you are not alone if the discomfort itself makes you feel uncomfortable! There is a lot of work to do and processing all of this is not always easy but you learn best by doing and mistakes are okay! It is a big misconception that we will all get it right every time, so do not put too much pressure on yourself in that regard, rather commit to learning, listening and trying your best to contribute to important change!

Welcome back to the Strategy Hour Podcast! Today’s episode is mostly for the listeners out there whose businesses are under the $500k a year earning mark but who have this possibility on the horizon. We want to talk to you about the growth that happens around this point and for you to ask yourself whether you really need to keep growing. The reason this is an important question is because as you scale past $500k you actually may not increase your profits.

This law of diminishing returns is something we have experienced at Boss Projects as we grew. What does it really mean to have a seven figure business? The answer might not be quite what you expect. In order to get you ready for these possibilities we will be talking accounting and the different ways that making money works in your business. So if you are ready to start making your revenue work for you and to keep your profits up, listen in, we cover it all!

Many times people come to us and ask where they should start with their business. They’re overwhelmed and feel like they’re having to do so many different things when really they want to focus on doing only the things that actually get results. You can also get totally snowed under by the ideas and opinions of others. The biggest detriment can be wanting to have all the bells and whistles of a thriving business and wanting all of them straight away. We argue for the opposite: first get the foundational things in order and get really good at it before worrying too much about the fluff.

Here is a construction analogy: In the Midwest, houses often have basements because their foundations have to be built below the snow line, otherwise it will crack. The same applies to our businesses: they require really solid foundations. Some of you have to take a few steps back and dig out a basement so that the structure of your business can be healthy and sturdy. A foundation allows you to have stability, and frankly, without a foundation, you don’t have a sustainable business. Today we’re talking about what’s involved in those initial stages that many people are skipping or putting off, so get ready to join us for another fun episode of the Strategy Hour Podcast!