Top Business Podcast • over 4 million downloads • 900+ episodes
The Strategy Hour Podcast
with abagail pumphrey
Recognized by INC and Forbes as one of the best podcasts for entrepreneurs, join our twice-weekly show as we share business strategies, interviews, and actionable advice for building an online business your way.
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Our Episodes
How To Host Your First (Profitable) Virtual Summit with Kyrsten Sherwood
Hello all you wonderful entrepreneurial unicorns and biz badasses! We have a really kickass buddy on the show today to share some great information and inspiring stories. Please help us welcome Kyrsten Sherwood from Copper Kettle! Kyrsten is here to tell us about her experiences hosting virtual, online summits and hopefully help you think through how you could possibly do it in the future! Isn’t that fun? This episode will get you started on thinking about how you can setup and run your own events and there is a ton of valuable information for those interested. So if you have ever wondered about doing something like this you will love what Kyrsten has to say!
We also believe that online events, like Kyrsten’s summit, are a great stepping stone to bigger, in person events, so who knows what you could be achieving in next to no time! In our discussion, we look at the differences between these types of events and which parts of the online overlap with real world hosting. Kyrsten gives us some insight into Copper Kettle’s business plan and how her virtual summit now fits into that. From there she takes us through some of the setup procedures and how you might go about getting ready for an event before talking about the monetization of free online video summits. You are not going to want to miss this one! We promise!
The Dos and Don’ts of Your Email Welcome Sequence
Hey everybody and welcome back to the The Strategy Hour! We hope you’re as excited for today’s episode as we are because we have something special for your earbuds that we know you are going to love. Today we will be talking about email welcome sequences and how to do them right. It took us some time and few missteps to get our’s where they are today, and we are happy to share all the blunders we made for you and your business’ benefit! We want to help you get your welcome sequence just right for your needs and most importantly to make it profitable, so buckle up!
During this discussion we’ll be guiding you through our history with email tools and ideas and showing you just what worked...and what didn’t. At the end of the chat we will be sharing something extra special that can take you one step further in your marketing so make sure to listen out for that. We cover the purpose and reasons for having a bomb welcome sequence and do a deep dive into why our first welcome sequence was so bad! (Imagine that!) From there we share some of the reasons why it can be so difficult to get this right, especially in the beginning, and we finish off by emphasizing what you should be focusing on when you are putting your sequence together. Let’s do it!
How to Massively Increase Your Facebook ROI with Courtney Foster Donahue
Today’s show is an extra special one. In fact it was so special that we had to re-release it to all of our listeners because it was too good for just one run! This was a chat we had a little while ago with our friend, fellow unicorn and amazing red headed beauty, Courtney Foster-Donahue. Courtney Foster-Donahue is an Atlanta-based four-time entrepreneur, business strategist who specializes in video content creation and Facebook marketing and advertising. Courtney helps entrepreneurs to win using Facebook through her new program called FB Framework. The program was previously, and in some portions of this conversation, called FB Everything, just so you do not need to be confused between the two.
With over 1.96 billion people around the world on Facebook today, why are so many businesses claiming Facebook is dead, turning away from Facebook Ads, or not seeing any benefits in them? From Facebook page optimization, your business Facebook page, Facebook ads, to all the tiny tips to get you maximizing your reach and growing your business, we are covering everything. This re-run busts the Facebook myths that will help you turn your business around!
The 10 Things No One Ever Tells You About Going Evergreen
We have been working our booties off behind the scenes trying to set up something pretty epic in our business – the evergreen machine. So, in this episode, we’re finally ready to tell you about the pros and cons of this soul-destroying process and why it is so worth it! We all talk about financial freedom, we all want it, but you don’t always hear about the nitty-gritty testing, the waiting, the endless funnels inside the funnels and the insurmountable self-doubt it takes pushing through to get there.
Despite the many cons of evergreening, we managed to maintain our sanity, not kill each other, stick it out and evergreen a $2000 course online. The benefits of this has been more than we ever dreamed, and we want to tell you all about it, and how you can do it too. If you are a six figure business owner and are interested in evergreening one of your courses, then we want you to pay attention to this episode – it could just change your life.
Boss Talk: How Do You Think Email Marketing is Changing Due to New Regulations? (+The Future of Email)
Today’s Boss Talk question is: How do you think email marketing is changing due to new regulations? We all know the importance of email marketing, but the truth is that the state of email has changed a lot over the past few years and with the new data protection regulations, it is changing even more. Where is it headed and how are we going to have to adapt? Tackling this question here with us today, is our favorite regular, Steph Crowder of Courage & Clarity.
In this episode, we discuss the trending question, “Is email marketing dead?” and how you can make your emails stand out in a way that doesn’t make people kick you to their spam folder. We also discuss the power of in-person marketing, why talking to people like they’re human is the best tactic and how Abbie has been able to have a successful side business with no email marketing at all.
Feel-Good Marketing: Using Your Personality to Grow Your Biz with Brit Kolo of Jam Marketing Group
Today on the show we welcome Brit Kolo of Jam Marketing Group. Brit is a feel good marketing coach, accountability partner, abundance junkie and hugger of all things plants. Brit coaches boxed-in business owners to become independent, profitable leaders through self-awareness and #MarketingThatFeelsGood. In this episode, we’re diving into all things personality type and this corresponds to marketing plans. Brit believes that you shouldn’t have to feel fake and sales-y in order to grow your business.
By knowing your personality type and using that as a home base for your marketing strategy, she believes that you can truly create marketing that feels good for you. Here we break down what types of things feel good for certain personalities and what things might make us feel icky and uncomfortable, so that you can lean into the thing that is going to help you market faster, better and stronger. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a good sense of how you can make selling feel so right for you in your business.
May Review Session: The Month We Deleted 21k Subscribers
Hey ya’ll! It’s our May review / June planning session coming to you live from Emylee’s very dirty office. In this episode, we go over some of the things we accomplished and didn’t accomplish in May, some of our daring plans for June and let you in on a little big secret… This June we will be bringing you the biggest launch you have ever witnessed at TCC and share some of our exciting new sponsorship prospects on the horizon.
We also share some successful news from our grueling switch over to Active Campaign and reveal why we deleted 21k subscribers from our list and are as cool as cucumbers about it. We also share the changes we have made to the business with GDPR compliance and why vanity numbers really don’t mean a thing. By the end of this episode, you will have a few great resources to help you take the steps you need to take in your business in order to reach success and sustainability.
5 Days to Launch is Back
#5DaystoLaunch Challenge is BACK, babe! Word on the street is, you have some pretty bomb ideas but for whatever reason, you just keep them in your pocket, you sit on them, you hold onto them, and you don’t launch them. What the heck? What are you waiting for, lady? There is a valuable opportunity there that can earn you some real cash dollar bills for your business. So many of you come to us saying that you have this amazing dreamy idea, but you are frozen, you are stuck, and you are on the fence. A lot of you live in Sitting-on-the-fence-ville, right? But the reality of it all is, it is not comfortable or really beneficial for anyone.
We want to help you to get into the launch mindset and this is why we created the 5 Days to Launch Challenge to arm you with the strategies and the steps you need to get there. We have determined that launching something and launching it well really just comes down to five steps. That’s it. Five steps. And we’re here to remind you what those steps are with a repeat one of most valuable episode to-date. You can do one step a day and at the end of five days, you will have launched a product and made actual money. So, get ready to jump into your very own launch by signing up for the challenge today! No excuses.
Gamify Your Business with Erin Kelly of MemberVault
Today on the Strategy Hour Podcast we welcome the wonderful, the magnificent, the powerhouse, Erin Kelly! Erin is here to talk to us about MemberVault, something we are more than excited about. We’ll be hearing about how MemberVault uses gamification as way to boost your business and increase your revenue. Erin will be starting from the very beginning and explaining exactly what MemberVault does and what gamification actually means, so if any of this sounds new and a little daunting, don’t worry because we have you covered!
During our discussion you’ll get everything you need to know about the great service that MemberVault provides and how you might be able to incorporate it into your strategy. By incentivizing, tracking and tagging, MemberVault enables businesses to tailor and curate their communications and offers to their audiences which are proven to increase results. Sound good? We thought so! The most exciting part of it all is how the service actually cuts down on your workload and allows many automated actions to occur. You will be getting more interaction for less time spent, and if that isn’t the ticket, we do not know what is. So stay tuned as Erin helps us break it all down for your listening pleasure.
Rethinking Your Email Marketing Strategies with Chris Davis of ActiveCampaign
Today on the podcast, we welcome our latest internet crush, Chris Davis. Chris is the Director of Education at ActiveCampaign and is an email marketing genius. With everything going on in your business, the truth is, you need to take your email marketing seriously. Chris has helped us so much with kicking our email marketing strategy into high gear. He is an incredible resource, and in this episode, we get deep into discovering information about your customers, as well as some of the basic mindsets you need to be in when you’re starting your email marketing game.
Chris uses a ton of analogies to break this information down in a way that is easily digestible for newcomers and old-timers alike. We discuss how to personalize your emails, the benefit of multiple marketing platforms and get a few key tips for using the ActiveCampaign platform. If you are about to tackle your own email strategy, this episode will really help you to dive in with the right mindset. And if you already have an email marketing strategy set up and sailing, there is information in this episode that will get you to reconsider, adapt and improve it. If you are just stuck or overwhelmed, in any shape or form, about your strategies – this episode is here to help you reset that mentality, help you move forward and get your audience through the door.
Create a Highly Engaged Facebook Group with Josh Stanton of Screw the Nine to Five
Today on the show we welcome Josh Stanton. Josh is the co-founder of Screw The Nine To Five, which is his and his wife, Jill’s, slice of the internet where they help entrepreneurs bring more attention to their brands, make more money in their business and get more out of their life through simple strategies, how to’s and behind-the-scenes glimpses into the realities of building a business online. In this episode, we tackle the topic of how to create a highly engaged Facebook group. We’re here today to let you in on a little secret and that Facebook member numbers is kind of a load of BS if you don’t have engagement! But how do you cultivate engagement, and better yet sustain it, from the get-go?
Josh lets us in on their tips, tricks and processes that have helped him and Jill create a successful, highly engaged and empowered Facebook group that actually drives members to sales. All done in as little as thirty minutes a week! We discuss how to show up for your people personally, how to drive them to your products or services, how to set group rules and expectations and how to keep your page alive and buzzing with content, questions and resources that impact the community you are serving. If you are looking to step up your Facebook game and create a thriving community – then this is the episode to fill up your notepad up with!
ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign
All right, it’s the episode you’ve all been waiting for. We are finally ready to talk about the biggest change we’ve made in TCC in a long time. We’ve moved email service providers… TWICE and we spoke about this is in our monthly review for April but promised we would break it all down into an episode all of its own. So here it is. Today we are running through the reason why we switched from MailChimp to ConvertKit, and then switched again from ConvertKit to Infusionsoft and then again from Infusionsoft to ActiveCampaign. Complexities aside, what we really want this episode to do is serve as an educational resource for you if you are needing help deciding between two platforms.
So in this episode we will be diving into why certain platforms just didn’t work, as well as the key reasons that made us sway to ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign. We walk you through various system features of the platforms, like ConvertKit’s tagging-based system versus ActiveCampaign’s automation-based system and how these worked for us. We also get into the nitty-gritty’s of how integrations, deep integrations and visual automation work in ConvertKit as well as in ActiveCampaign and how we were able to find out so much more about our customers using certain features. No matter what service provider you choose, at the end of the day you should always pick what feels right for you and your business. We hope that this episode will help you to make a more informed choice and get you a step closer to being a turbo-boss babe!
Utilizing LIVE Video with Facebook & Instagram with Jenny Melrose
Today on the podcast we welcome Jenny Melrose. Jenny is a former reading specialist who retired from her teaching career and started blogging. She is the owner at jennymelrose.com, the lifestyle blogger over at The Melrose Family and has worked with brands that are nationally recognized, such as Neutrogena, Smuckers, Glad, Costco, Stanley Steamer, Sarah Lee and many more. In this episode, we are talking to Jenny specifically about live video broadcasting and how to utilize this fantastic new tool for Facebook and Instagram.
We briefly touch on topics like sponsored posts and sponsored live content, but for the most part we are talking about how to get over the fear of live video, how to get started, how to create engaging content and how to get people to interact with you so that you can increase your organic reach, which ultimately leads to sales! We will also be discussing how you can pitch to brands and how this has been crucial to Jenny’s business success – and the good news is, it’s easier than you think! If you have been on the fence about live broadcasting, are not sure how to structure your video or what topics to cover – no matter what industry you an in, this episode will help you find your voice.
Quadrupling Your Email List and Selling Out a Group Program with Steph Crowder of Courage & Clarity
Today on the podcast we welcome the email list queen, Steph Crowder. Steph is an educator and coach at Courage & Clarity, one of our Mastermind members and the “Den Mamma” at Fizzle.co. She is a delight to have on the show and we’re excited to dive into her secret sauce! The email list is where it’s at, right? Everyone has heard about the email list buzz, but the truth is your email list is keeping a lot of you up at night! This episode is helpful for those who are terrified of opt-ins, emails and have no clue what to do with those subscribers afterwards! Steph has been on a recent journey of quadrupling her email list in just 30 days. But what is brilliant about Steph is that she then successfully went on to sell programs to those already warmed up dreamy dreamers.
Steph has so many action steps for those who are feeling overwhelmed by their email list, are not sure what to focus on and don’t know how they should grow. For those of you just starting to get your business off the ground – Steph feels ya and gives some great tips on what to do, as well as what not to do in those early stages. She also gives us a great model for setting up your work week in just 15 minutes every Sunday afternoon while you sip a cuppa tea. So take notes because by the end of this episode, you will have all the tools and all the inspiration needed to get to work on this right away!
Beginner Business Series - Part 4: Your Marketing Game Plan
Today we are creating your marketing game plan and we couldn’t be more jazzed. Up to this point in the Beginner Business Series, you have figured out what you are best at and what you can get to market the quickest without learning anything new. We’ve also figured out how to package and price it. We’ve set up your shop, listed it and you are ready to sell! You’ve come a long way and in today’s episode, we’re going to dive into your marketing game plan so you can get your stuff out into the world and start making money right away.
A lot of the times, when people get to this point of selling, they’ve taken all the necessary steps to get there, but their product just won’t sell! Why? Well, we want to tell you this is not because you or your product or service or idea suck – it’s because you just didn’t have a solid marketing game plan in place. So if this sounds like you, you’re in the right place. Marketing just so happens to be our internet love child and in this episode, we’re going to be walking you through social media posts and the three foundational posts you should be doing in order to engage your audience and build a consistent relationship with them – one that will benefit them as much as it does you. So let’s jump in and get started!
meet your host
I don’t believe there’s one right way to build a business.
I’m your host, Abagail Pumphrey. And I’m dedicated to supporting online businesses.
I’m here to help you build business your way: one that supports not only the life you have but the life you want. I’m on a personal mission to help you become financially free.
I’m talking about all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a 7-figure online business. I’m here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way, whether you’re creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business.
I want to hear your hot takes, your biggest takeaways, or the genius ideas that pop in your head as you’re listening to the show.
My DMs are always open on Instagram, so head over and introduce yourself so I can get to know you!
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Meet Our Partners
The links below are affiliate links. We receive a commission (at no additional cost to you) when you purchase through these links.
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Digital Product Jumpstart
Build your list and grow your revenue at the same time!
I’ve kept these details to myself for far too long. I’m ready to spill everything and give you the exact steps that’ve helped me generate tens of thousands of qualified leads and MILLIONS in low-ticket digital product sales. I won’t just show you what I did, I’ll teach you how you can do it too.
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