Today on the podcast we welcome husband and wife business duo, Ben and Laura Harrison, of Jonas Paul Eyewear. This episode is for anyone who has ever been afraid to go after that seemingly unattainable business or their passion project. A lot of us let those things sit on the shelf gathering dust because they seem, well, really hard and really scary! Ben and Laura are two people who are really living what a lot of people only dream of creating. In 2013, Ben and Laura gave birth to their son, Jonas Paul. Jonas was born with a rare disorder, Peter’s Anomaly. As Ben and Laura searched for fashionable eyeglasses for their visually impaired son, they grew increasingly frustrated at the limited (and very un-trendy) options for children.

They were so inspired by their son, that they decided to leave their careers to launch Jonas Paul Eyewear with the mission of helping children feel beautiful in their glasses and providing sight to children in need with every purchase. Laura and Ben saw a gap in the market, combined their skills and followed their passions and their need to make a difference in the world to create a unique and impactful business. In this episode, we’ll be diving deeper into how their business came about, the challenges they faced along the way and how they transitioned from a service based business in wedding photography to a product based business in eye care! Ben and Laura have a truly inspiring story and if you have an idea you’ve been wanting to get off the ground – trust us, you’ll have all the motivation you need after this episode.

Today on the show we are going back in time to an old episode. Our schedules were jam-packed this past week — speaking at a conference in Chicago for She Did It Her Way, and having our massive strategy planning session for the rest of the year and our future — so we didn’t get to record another episode of the Goal Crusher Series. However, we think you will enjoy this episode because it is definitely an oldie, but a goodie! It is all about chasing those sparkly squirrels, what to do, and what questions to ask yourself when those sparkly squirrels pop up, as they always do!

Most creatives seem to also be known as “serial entrepreneurs” because we’re constantly thinking of new ideas and wanting to try them out. Although this keeps us innovative in business, it can also paralyze us and hold us back. Inside this episode we go through how you can stay on track or maybe get distracted intentionally to help grow your business. We’re getting you focused and making you ask the hard questions before you dive into something unknown or add on something new to what you already have to offer. So jump into this episode as we get some clarity up in here!

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.

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.

In this episode we dive into seven habits that we believe lead to a more productive life and a more productive business. These seven habits will ultimately help you achieve the goals and dreams you are seeking – whether those are personal or financial. You are one person, with multiple facets, and you can’t play blind to the fact that you have a life outside of work! We want to incorporate that into living a lifestyle that gets you where you want to go. These seven habits have been monitored over time in our own business. Whenever we are incredibly productive, we take a look at everything that we were doing over that time and ask, “What was a constant? What habits combined aided our productivity?”

A lot of people ask us what is it that makes us so productive, and everyone seems to be waiting for that miracle answer. But the reason why we are covering seven habits is because it is never just one thing. It’s never just one thing you do that helps you sell more, or get more people on your list, or land more clients. It is a combination of things that helps to create a successful business and a successful human being. So take a listen and learn more about the seven habits we focus on that have led to more productivity in our lives and how it can lead to more productivity in your life too.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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

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!

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.

Today on the podcast we have Sarah Peck, who is a writer, startup advisor, and yoga teacher based out of New York City. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Startup Pregnant, a media company documenting the stories of women’s leadership across work and family. Inside today’s episode we are talking all about planning ahead for this year, how to eliminate 50% of your workload, and we’re going through the process of the system she used to really figure out how much time she realistically had so she could plan accordingly.

If you’re a momma, or you’re busy, or you’re a human, then you just need to pay attention because we will take you step-by-step through an exercise to reduce your to-do list in a cray way so that you can have a happier and more fulfilled life. Sarah is an incredible human being with a lovely soft radio voice that we often try to mimic, so we really think you are going to enjoy this episode just because of the sound of her voice alone. Don’t miss out!