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! 

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!

Welcome to the Strategy Hour, everybody! Today's show is all about our upcoming summit! Yup, it is our fourth summit, can you believe it? This time we are focused on helping you make the most of the end of the year and soaring into the new year like a rockstar! It is going to be so awesome and we can hardly contain our excitement about it! There is so much potential for the last part of the year and we probably do not need to tell you that Q4 is a really big one for small business owners. 

Our summit is going to set you up to tie a big, beautiful bow around 2019 and kickstart the new year on the right foot with the best energy. It can also be used as a great way to take stock and move into the next phase based on the lessons available. We wanted to bring you a complete package that offers a selection of things you need for now, the end of the year and the new year too! These time-sensitive strategies and ideas will cover Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the holiday season, planning, questions and setting goals. We want to help you commit to the right things and give you the right stuff to implement in your business for the better. Join us as we give a preview of what to expect!

Today we are super glad to welcome business and NLP coach Jen Casey to the show! Hailing from NYC, Jen is focused on helping coaches sell profitable group programs by incorporating psychology into their sales techniques. She also has her own podcast called the Inner Boss Podcast, so make sure to check that out! As you probably know, here at The Strategy Hour we are pretty obsessed with psychology! Jen is all about perfecting sales language for webinars and in-person meetings and uses her techniques to change deep-rooted beliefs and alter the neural pathways that hold us back. 

She has action steps for repeating patterns that create new pathways and habits that are more in line with our goals and ambitions and by learning these ideas you can help your customers do the same thing! This is a long episode with lots to think about, so you might want to grab a notepad to take part in the exercises! Make sure to share your experiences on our Instagram, we love hearing from you!

Today on the podcast we are joined by the fabulous Lauren Goldstein, CEO and founder of Golden Key Partnership, a strategy consulting firm that helps businesses to scale smart in order to be more sustainable. There is tons to learn from her seasoned and scientifically-backed approach, so today she will be dishing out straightforward facts, particularly as it pertains to productivity and how it relates to your profit. She shares time-wasting tactics that many of us are skilled at and pulls up some new studies that illuminate what distraction does to our day. A question we often think about is what we need to be doing to move our business forward, and it can be stressful to decide which of the dozens of things to take or leave. Lauren weighs in on the matter with some simple, no-nonsense advice. 

Being overwhelmed with tasks can lead to decision fatigue, which prevents us from effectively prioritizing tasks that are most important. Productivity and processes can make or break an entrepreneur because of burnout or be the demise of a business due to revenue and profit leaks. According to the IDC, companies lose 20 to 30% in revenue every year as a result of inefficiencies. This is a staggering statistic! Therefore, we bring you this episode that is guaranteed to help you improve your productivity, so be sure to join in the conversation! 

Would you ever consider deleting your Instagram account if you had nearly 40,000 followers? Businesses go through different seasons and for a long time we had not focused on Instagram because we were otherwise occupied. But for some reason, our account remained semi-active and we were still slowly but surely gaining followers, even though we only really posted about the podcast and random bits in between. But the engagement was poor, so much so that we no longer saw the need to post at all or to have the account, and this set us on a rollercoaster of a journey of trying to figure out whether we should delete our existing account and start all over again. This might sound crazy, but we had what we believed were legitimate reasons for wanting to do that, and our intentions were so good! 

We were absolutely convinced that this was the way to go, that is, until a comment or two from our audience and friends threw a wrench in the works and forced us back to square one. This was an amazing educational process that we came though as we learned a ton about ourselves, our business and what our approach to our followers should be. If you are thinking about deleting your account and starting off with a clean slate or just looking to grow your Instagram engagement, this episode is perfect for you, so be sure to listen in! 

Today we talk about a fascinating topic, one that affects every single one of you in one way or another in your business. When we think about marketing, we tend to think about psychology in general and the things that inherently appeal to all people. But, there is a better way to approach marketing and it pertains to the different generations. Ever thought about why people of different ages think and behave so differently from one another and often bump heads, whether in families or in business? What we discuss today will shed a whole lot of light on this subject. We compare and contrast the generations, from the traditionalists up to Gen Z and everything in between. 

Each new generation is constructed in a unique way with different things that impact how they view the world and what kinds of consumers they are. For this reason, marketing efforts should be adjusted accordingly to ensure that you speak to the needs of the generation you are targeting, and so you can better understand why certain initiatives will be more effective than others. We have relied heavily on the research of the amazing Jason Dorsey for this episode, so a lot of the information provided here is from his work on the topic. Definitely check out his website if you want to find out more. Jason also speaks about a very interesting new thought about millennials, one which we will get into on this episode, so be sure to tune in! 

Today we’re excited to be talking about a number of awesome productivity hacks. We know this is a popular topic many have covered, but it’s because it shapes the future of your business and in fact, your day-to-day happiness! We sometimes get stuck in a rut where we simply can’t focus and work like we are able to at other times. Now, with the changing season, we thought it would be an appropriate time to relook at some of these daily practices and share what we’ve personally done to up our level of productivity. 

In this episode, each of us will share three tips that have worked for us, including claiming your me-time, structuring your day, considering your optimal work environment and building rewards into stressful tasks. For all of this and more, don’t miss out on today’s productivity hacks episode! 

This is an episode that can apply to any of our listeners, no matter where you are currently at with your biz! There are always times that you need to get people on board and with what you are doing or hoping to do. Whether you are just starting or ramping up to a new level, conversations have to be had with those close to us, to create understanding, buy-in and a system that can work for you. You need to be able to communicate where your passion lies and how you want to do things moving forward and these can be awkward conversations at times but we are here to guide you the process and make it that little bit easier! We want to help you to see what is important, what must be said and what can be left out.

These are such necessary conversations with our friends, partners, and family and their buy can be the help that you need to get where you are going. At the same time, you do not have to rely on people being on board with us to be successful, you will have to gauge your own needs in this regard. Change, whether big or small, can be a gamble and moving in new directions often has no guarantees. We suggest a bit of planning of these types of conversations as well as some warning for the other party involved. Most people do not like big announcements sprung on them out of nowhere! We also want to mention that other people's feelings are not your problem or your choice but that does not mean they will not affect you. We want to help you make things go smoother in potentially rocky terrain, so join us as we dive in!

We’ve previously done an episode about what you need to consider before starting a podcast, and we admit that it was a bit of a Debbie Downer, so today we want to do a follow up of that where we go over some of the things we’ve learned in the meantime. We talk about the reasons for starting a podcast and about everything you should have set up before you can start, including deciding on the extent to which you will be involved and the equipment you will need to record and where to find it. 

On a more serious note, we talk about the profitability of podcasting and what you can expect to get out of it as well as different ways you might think of monetizing it. We then switch to chatting about bringing guests on the show and finding fun topics and conclude with our number one tip for getting your show noticed and sponsored, so be sure to join in on the conversation! 

Ever been stuck with ideas and you just didn’t know if they were right for you or how to put them into action? We’ve been getting tons of questions from you all out there, and most of the questions being along the lines of, “How do you guys know when a product or a launch is the right thing to do?” and “When do you reassess and change things and how do you actually know that something isn’t quite right?” We’re here today to tell you about our past experiences and how we got to figuring it all out.

In our experience we’ve always just kinda “did it” and generally made it happen. There haven’t been many ideas that have come up that didn’t ultimately end up being created. We’re digging into how we originally started and how we knew it was the right choice for us.  We also delve into where our heads were at along the process and what you can do turn your vision into daily actions. From idea, to conception, to sale, we’re giving you both parts of our system. Be sure to keep listening to find out more!

Welcome back to the show everyone out there! So happy to have you and also so happy to have a great friend with us today! None other than Haley Burkhead is here to tell you all about how to make your business more profitable through automation and what she calls the scalability factor. Haley is our go to texting buddy for all things business and we are basically texting best buds at this point! We are able to help each other out so much in times of need so we hope what she has to say on the show today will help you too!

All of us want you to have that consistency that makes business work! This is what the scalability factor can do for you. It can take the parts of your biz that are challenging and the least fun and get them done; better, faster and at higher levels so you can focus on what you love to do; be creative and connect with your peeps! It is such a unique and well proven model we cannot wait for you to share in the results!

Today on the show we welcome Melissa Megginson! She is the Community Manager and resident Cat Lady at Tailwind, a company that is dedicated to helping brands with their visual and Pinterest aspirations. Tailwind can really help you and your biz conquer Pinterest in a way you might never have thought was possible. We really love Melissa and the work she does as Tailwind has helped us out a lot over the years! They offer organic and free ways for you to get more engagement, traffic and customers on the platform and that is exactly what we are going to be talking to Melissa about today! She will also be filling us in on what is new and exciting on Pinterest and what we might expect for the future.

We have pretty much loved Pinterest since the beginning and were definitely part of the 'Pinterest wedding' generation! You know what we mean! Over time we have watched it evolve and change, thankfully not as much as some other social platforms out there but there has been some definite development and growth since we started using it. We began using Pinterest for business pretty early on in our company history and definitely found that Tailwind helped tremendously with our efforts, so let's hear what Melissa has to say!