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!

Today on the podcast, we have Parker Stevenson of Evolved finance. We are like super pumped for you to hear from him because he’s actually one of our few male team members. Parker and his business partner, Corey, not only do the books for other online entrepreneurs, but they also coach businesses along the way. We were super excited to start working together in the new year — we had lots of things going on at the time, so it was the perfect moment to get them on board.

In this episode, you are going to learn a lot! Parker shares his opinion on small businesses DIY’ing their books, if you should do that, how you should do that, and what in the French toast “your books” even means. We go over trends that he has seen in the online business entrepreneurial world, his best tips for getting your finances organized, and he even goes through and talks to us about what the heck a profit and loss statement is and how that might be the next best thing since sliced bread when it comes to your business. We know you guys are going to love this episode, so we can’t wait for you to give this one a listen.

In today’s episode, we’re probably going to get a little personal and a little emotional, but we think it’s important that we tell you a little bit about what happened earlier this year and how we have been able to manage all the changes. In the beginning of 2017, Emylee adopted a baby, which completely changed her whole world.  Things were going so well as a new mom, but suddenly she totally hit a wall with work. It wasn’t like she did not want to work anymore or did not want to be a mom; she just struggled to figure out a balanced way to do both at the same time.

Around the same time, Abby was in a car accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury. So it is safe to say we had a bit of a rocky start to 2017 and we spent a good chunk of the beginning of the year mourning and grieving our former selves. So in today’s episode, we are jumping into all the details on what happened, how we handled the changing situations, and exactly how we got out on the other side.

We are super excited to bring you our friend, Christy Laurence, who is the founder of Plann, a visual planner and scheduler app for Instagram. Plann is designed to help you create a follow worthy feed in advance as a great strategy for Instagram growth. A bunch of you probably already use this app and know and love it, so we are really excited today for her to share some of the ins and outs of her business.

Inside this episode, we are talking about what it is like to build an app, what did it cost, what are the startup expectations of working with a developer, and what kind of person it takes to actually do it. Christy also shares what you need to know before hiring someone, and where you should be putting your app — iOS, android, or both? We dive into how to get traction, how to create a marketing strategy, and the whole nine yards. Plus, we even get a little behind-the-scenes story of why Christy started Plann in the first place. You’re going to learn a lot inside this episode, so get excited to dive right in.

We are going to mix it up a little bit today on the podcast, by doing a Q&A session with yours truly. For this Q&A, it will be kind of like you are here because we are going to say some of your names, answer your questions, and give you our best tips and advice. Now, these questions do not necessarily make sense together, and they are in no particular order. We are simply taking them as they come, and knocking them out of the park for you guys.

Some of the questions were submitted on Instagram, some of them are common questions we see over in the Facebook group, and some of them are just because we decided to throw them in because either someone has asked them at some point or because we just thought y’all needed all the answer to them. To add to that, maybe we will just make up some questions as we go along just to keep it super spicy. Tune in to find out. There is no rhyme or reason to today’s episode, so let’s just have fun with it!

Today, we are super excited to talk about some stuff that might surprise you guys. We are telling you all the reasons why we say no to “opportunities”. Most opportunities, honestly. Plus, we get into the thought process behind our no’s and how you can begin to ask yourself different questions when you get thrown various opportunities in your own business. We’re chatting about how to figure out whether an opportunity is the right fit for you or not, if it’s going to pay off, and whether or not it is going to be beneficial for both parties and all of that fun stuff.

Now, the things we are saying no to may be either big or small — we don’t agree to anything that might not be right for our audience and our business. But perhaps you are on the other side of this fence, and you are using other businesses, companies, or brands to promote your own product. We are going to give you some tips on how you can make your process even better by sharing the types of pitches we’ve loved and said yes to. So you are going to get some inside scoop today and we are pretty pumped about it, and if you want us to say “yes”, then you should definitely listen to this episode!

Today, we are going to talk about some dream weeks, some not so not so dream weeks, and how we have transitioned in our business. We chat about our journey, and how our lives and work days evolve as our business grows and changes and as our lives grow and change. We also discuss the kind of questions we begin to ask ourselves when we want to strive towards a different or better ideal week. We go over how to start working through some of these challenges yourself.

In this episode we are going to walk you through the process of what it looked like when we were scaling a multiple six figure business, and how we kind of hit a brick wall at the beginning of 2017 and had to learn a whole new world of how to run a business through health struggles and being a new mom. We dive into how managing life and business was completely different and why always keeping in mind what we wanted along the way was super important to us. Instead of letting the world just slip away from us, we kept our hopes and dreams actively in front of us and that’s what we want for you as well.

Lately, we’ve seen a lot of people rebel, and not in a good way. There is a little bit of anti-trendsetting happening, and although we totally fit in with the weirdos and the misfits, we need to give you guys a little bit of a reality check about the difference between marketing tactics that work and trends that you can spin your own style on. We are going to peel back the layers, Shrek style, so you can better understand how to move past the fear of not understanding and learn how to use these tactics for your unique business.

Today’s conversation is going to be a lot of this versus that, and we are going to give you a peek into a lot of the pushback that we hear from our audience and those in the online creative space. We are going to break down the difference between marketing tactics, style, and branding. So if you are looking to get some ideas on how you can spin these tactics and make them work for you and your own business, then listen in!

Alrighty babes, today we are getting super nerdy. We are bringing you some stats and some numbers, all in the hopes of giving you a little peek into why we do what we do. Because of what is going on in the world of small businesses, we hope to give you some motivation, a little bit of fire under your booty to keep doing the work, to keep being boss, to keep running your business, strategizing, and continually doing better at whatever it is that you are taking on.

Uncovering what our mission is and why it is what it is, we know that you will come out with a little bit of clarity on getting to the heart of your business and being able to voice it to other people. We have dug deep and done our research, and the bottom line is that there are not enough women business owners out there who are successful enough to be profitable enough to contribute to society, contribute to their families, and contribute to changing the stats across the United States! We hope that hearing these numbers inspires you to find your own mission, and living out your why.

As a two woman team, we get a lot of questions about how we make a partnership work. We always get asked how we met, how we work as a team inside TCC, and what gave us the idea to make the leap from collaborators to business partners. We know it’s not necessarily super common, but it seems like everyone is always interested in seeing how this works. So we figured we would share some of the actual tools and mindsets that we went through when we barely knew each other at first and started the business, like normal people do of course.

When we first met we were each running our own businesses at the time, yet serving a similar clientele. We quickly learned that we had a lot in common and it was not long before we decided to work together, instead of doing the same things separately. We became really fast friends and we were talking literally every day. We realized that with every sentence that we spoke, it was the exact same dream and hope and goal that the other person had.