We’ve been getting a lot of questions about our side hustles, the things we work on outside of Boss Project. Since we’re right back at the beginning stages with these projects, we thought it might be a good idea to share things as we implement and test them out. In this episode, we are going to dive into Abagail’s side hustle, sharing with listeners her processes, struggles and everything she’s learning. 

She gives us the inside scoop on why she decided to take on this new endeavor, why she is personally invested in the health and wellness space, and what she hopes to offer other women who are in the same boat. Despite some people’s hesitancy about this type of business, Abagail shares how network marketing has been serving her well and then elaborates about the relevance of blogging, social media, email lists, Facebook ads, and other common strategies in her business. Finally, you will hear some great pointers for creating more consistency in your business! 

Today on the show we welcome Justine Nelson, founder of Debt Free Millennials. Justine is on a mission to advocate for a debt-free lifestyle, and today you will learn how this is relevant for your business and how it can fuel your personal financial goals. By the age of 25, Justine Nelson had paid off $35,000 in student loan debt making an average of $37,000 per year. Grit, discipline and a motivation to kick debt's ass for good helped her achieve this goal within two and a half years.

In this episode, we talk about leveraging your side hustle to pay off debt or save for that dream vacation, Justine’s go-to worksheets and business books, and a list of things you can do each month to ensure that you stay on track with your goals. We also talk about bookkeeping systems, budgeting, planning for annual subscriptions, and setting measurable goals. Now that 2020 is in full swing, why not tune in to this episode and learn how to get your debt and savings dealt with? 

As we all know, ’tis the season to set new goals, make resolutions, and ditch those nasty habits that were holding us back in 2019. We’ve already seen a whole range of resolutions from all of you; everything from what you want to learn, what you want to get better at, and what you want to let go of in the new year. Within those we’ve seen one similar theme constantly pop up, and that is removing or scaling down on social media, specifically Facebook and Instagram. 

So, in today’s episode we want to dive into our relationship with social media and offer some reframes that will be truly helpful in redefining this relationship, especially as it pertains to your business. As with all trends, there are always highs and lows and the conversation we are seeing nowadays is painting social media in a bad light. So instead of being bogged down by all that is bad about social media, we want to give you the tools to refocus on your business needs. Stay tuned as we go through our top tips to help you get a head start on your resolutions for 2020!

Today our guest is Jennifer Turner, the founder of Gemini where she helps online business owners improve their copywriting and design to create higher conversion rates. Gemini is an online branding and education platform and Jennifer is the rare combination of a trained copywriter and designer! Their MO is unifying a business' voice in the copy and design to tell a stronger story. We love it! Today we will be focusing solely on the copy side of things and how to get yours up to scratch.

We are super excited for Jennifer to dive into her four-step formula for high converting copy and it is honestly one of the best formulas we have found in a long time! These kinds of frameworks can sometimes put you in a box or make you sound a bit robotic and this one is a really cool way to insert your story and your audience's story while coming up with something that gets your conversion rate all the way up! This can be used for freebies, opt-ins or paid services and programs. Tt can be applied in all of those areas just as effectively, that's how versatile it is, so get your notes ready and let's get into some strategy!

Can you believe it? The year 2019 is over and we’re starting 2020 in just a few hours! We’re talking about our New Year’s Eve plans and how Emylee is going to navigate a house full of party people – thanks to marrying a frat guy who has a million friends! But speaking about plans to enter the new year on a high note, today we share with you our biggest lessons from 2019 and how they should impact your (and our) strategies for 2020. Tricky situations are unavoidable, and we offer you some solid advice for mitigating their potentially negative effects. 

As business owners, we are required to keep learning and developing all the time – otherwise, we simply won’t be able to keep up and we’d never reach our full potential. There are logistics and technicalities you must deal with at some point, whether it’s your thing or not, because entrepreneurs and business owners need to fulfill a multitude of roles and responsibilities. We reckon you can give yourself a pat on the back for what you have achieved in your business this year. It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of grit. Join us for this last episode of 2019 to hear more about break-even points, short-term sacrifices, distractions, and a whole lot more! 

Welcome to the November profit report! All businesses experience ups and downs – we do too – and sometimes what at first seems like a minor thing turns out to have a big impact on profitability. You all know by now that we’re all about profit here at Boss Project and we’ve spent too much time focused on the top line that we missed many of the intricacies going on in the background of our business. We’ve been showing you how to stabilize your profit and our own goal is to get to that 30% mark, but we also understand that there are many moving parts – things that are beyond our control – that ultimately determine your profit. For starters, it’s imperative for you to know exactly what comes in and goes out of your business every single month and to be truly aware: you can’t fix something if you didn’t know it was broken! Three factors impacted us negatively in November, two of them were actually preventable, but now we know and we won’t make those same mistakes again. 

When we talk about being aware, you have to know your awareness not only drives your decision-making, but it makes you alter your focus on the flip side. It’s not necessarily that you need to decrease your costs, but it’s about looking carefully at what the root problem is. Something might even seem like an issue when it really isn’t. That’s why you never make decisions on a whim: decisions should be made after digging deeper to find the underlying problem. When you have this kind of information, you might look at your results differently. Join us again today as we take you through the highs and lows of November 2019! 

So Emylee has been following a new Instagram account and just wanted to share some of the amazing data that she has been geeking out over for the last while! We have selected four specific posts that she found thought-provoking and worth talking about and will be unpacking what they are about and what we can learn from them. The account is called Chartr Daily and they post charts and graphs that represent interesting statistics and facts from the business world. They often add some commentary and discussion in the description, as well as having a newsletter with more detailed information. 

Here at the Strategy Hour, we love looking at charts! They might be slightly more difficult to make but that does not mean we cannot appreciate and enjoy what they are communicating! The four charts we have selected to discuss in today's episode are especially applicable to us, our industry and the conversations we have been having on this podcast, so head over to have a look at the posts and let's get into some strategy!

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! 

Joining us for Strategy Hour today is networking ninja, Cassandra Thompson, who helps businesses extend their network through LinkedIn! But before you think that LinkedIn is only for professional or corporate folks and therefore not applicable to creative entrepreneurs like us, think again. Illustrators, jewelry designers, and service-based providers can all benefit greatly from a LinkedIn presence, and in this episode, Cassandra gives us the step-by-step of setting up a profile, an explanation of how exactly it works and she shares loads of strategies for getting the absolute maximum out of this platform. 

We have to be honest, we too neglected LinkedIn because we thought that it wasn’t really a space for creatives to connect, but after a debate with Cassandra, we have done a 180 — and we’re pretty sure you will too after listening to what she has to say. Be sure to stay tuned in until the end because we are going to give you a 30-day LinkedIn challenge that we’d love for you to participate in! 

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!

Our guest on the show today is Abbey Ashley, the founder of The Virtual Savvy! After running her own successful VA business for a few years, she has gone on to help other aspiring virtual assistants launch and grow their own at-home businesses from scratch. We get to pick her brain today, and the reason we’re so excited is that she has an amazing business philosophy which involves keeping things simple while still making a major impact! She has perfected the art of doubling down on the areas that work and remaining laser-focused on those rather than getting distracted. 

In this episode, you’ll learn about her launch game plans as well as how she deals with Black Fridays, teaching us how to set ourselves up for a booming year ahead. You’ll be thrilled to know that Abbey will also be a speaker at our upcoming Boss Project Summit, another great reason to sign up and get your pass! 

Do you want to increase your sales? Of course, you do, we all do! There are so many strategies out there on how to do this and today we are picking out four that we use and that have been highly effective for us! We hope that sharing this with you will help you decide which strategies are best for you and your hustle. When we speak about our work we are referring to Boss Project, our main thing and then each of our own side gigs. Some of the strategies have worked better in different places but we will be unpacking all of that, do not worry!

The cool thing is you get to try these out for yourself and see which suits you. We want you to think about which fits with your goals and lifestyle, as well as its conversion efficacy. These are the most important metrics for you to keep an eye on while testing things out. Don't forget to keep the conversation going over on Instagram, you know we love to hear from you, so hit us up with any thoughts or questions!

Today we are so lucky to host Joelle Elizabeth on the show! Joelle is a boudoir photographer and marketing strategist for other ambitious photographers and she is here to talk about growing a following and creating engagement on Instagram! 

Remember when we almost deleted out Instagram account? Well, Joelle was one of the amazing people who reached out to us and offered some great alternative ideas and we are eternally thankful to Joelle for the great value she has provided to us! Join us today as we get into how to double down on what you have going on and boost your status on the 'gram to get that business pumping!