How are you spending your time as a business owner, and what are you choosing to prioritize? As the CEO of your company, it’s crucial that you allocate your time in the best way possible. This, however, is much easier said than done. While the internet is populated with countless examples of how to increase your productivity and get more done during your working hours, few of them take into account the myriad of distractions and obligations that you and your clients need to contend with on a daily basis.

Today we’re talking about pricing! We have been discussing pricing for creative small business owners since the beginning. This is our happy place! We have a new version of this conversation today and are excited to share it with you. Let’s face it, the market is just totally weird right now. Business owners approach us often, asking for advice about whether to pivot or start over. And 90% of the time, we’re Team Pivot, as long as you ensure that your pivot aligns with what the market sees as essential. You’ve got to meet your clients or prospective clients where they’re at. So what does it take to close different kinds of clients at different price points?

Our mission at Boss Project is to empower creative business owners to build a life and business that excels financially and supports them soulfully. Since we started this business, we have been truly dedicated to helping build a community of fiercely supportive people that are also ridiculously profitable. So much of that comes with financial literacy.

We want to see more women and femmes in business be not only financially safe but financially thriving. That’s a huge reason we brought on today’s guest who is dedicated to empowering people through financial literacy. Shannon McLay is the CEO and Founder of Financial Gym, a revolutionary financial services company, and she is an expert in helping others to build both personal and business finance.

Maybe you’re a one-woman show. Maybe you’ve hired a part-time employee or a contractor or two. You have probably seen significantly high profits in your first few years. Now, you’re entering years three, four, five, and beyond, and you want to pay yourself more, hire more, or have other expenses you want to reallocate funds to. You’re so married to your high profits, that you will create goals for yourself to do anything you can to maintain those profits while being able to spend more money. We really want you to give yourself a bit of a break here! And that’s exactly what we hope to empower you to do through this episode.

How to live more and do less is one of our favorite topics of conversation. If you’re a natural people pleaser, it can be really hard to consider taking some things off of your to-do list. But people-pleasing can be rooted in a manipulative reflex. It can also be a trauma response. During the conference that Abagail recently attended, she heard from three speakers with one underlying message-- do less!

While this sounds counterintuitive, it's something we truly believe, and we want to share some of the nuggets of wisdom that helped us to prioritize this in our own lives, within a productivity-obsessed culture. Three inspiring speakers shared very different insights from their own personal journeys and the research they have done to understand the lives of others. Today, we’re sharing them with you.

If you follow us on social media, you might have seen that we have been on quite the podcast roadshow! One theme that kept coming out of our conversations is the things that service providers need to think about before scaling. We realized we need to take a step back and talk about it: what is scaling actually?

A lot of business owners misconstrue scaling and growth. Today, we want to talk about the actual definitions of these two processes, and how you can apply them in your business. You can have one without the other. You can have both. You can have neither. What does that really look like, intentionally, in your business? Tune in to find out!

Today’s discussion is about an idea that has had a resurgence recently for a number of reasons. The concept of finding a Third Place is nothing new! It’s actually been around for a long time; it is just popular at the moment. No matter how trendy it is, it is worthwhile to discuss and integrate into your life. The ‘Third Place’ was coined by a US sociologist who wrote a book called The Great Good Place describing a place outside of your home or work where you can relax.

The onset of a New Year is often accompanied by an inordinate amount of pressure. From the onslaught of 30-day health and wellness challenges to the call to “be more productive,” it seems like we are constantly being asked to do more and be better. But what does “better” mean exactly? And who are we doing it for?

In today’s episode, we unpack how to create better habits that actually stick and discuss ways to bring positivity and intentionality to both our personal and professional lives. We discovered long ago that New Year's resolutions just aren’t designed for us and that everyone has a preference when it comes to building healthier habits. Tune in as we discuss everything from starting your morning with positive intentions to crafting a mission statement for your business, and much more!

Have you ever felt that you’ve run out of boxes to check? It can feel unsettling not to be clear on what you should be pursuing, especially as you get older. We were pretty surprised to find out that most of the things we strive for as we age are actually developmental milestones. We learned that, with the passing of each decade, there needs to be a realignment to work toward a new set of goals. There’s a progression from building your career in your twenties, to finding life alignment in your thirties, connecting to passion and purpose in your forties, and building a legacy in your fifties and beyond. Striving to make these things a priority is a natural part of the life cycle.

This is not the first time we’re speaking about boundaries, and it won’t be the last. We love boundaries! They’re our favorite ‘B word’. We like setting them, we like holding them, and we like helping other people set them. One thing we find interesting is that when we start the conversation about boundaries and we lovingly push our clients or our team to create, set, and hold a boundary, it can be triggering for a lot of people. That’s because it makes us reflect on toxic behaviors we have allowed or done or negative stories we have told ourselves about why we might need boundaries.

Creativity is generally associated with art, yet it encompasses so much more than that! Because of the narrow definition of creativity, the majority of adults feel out of touch with their creativity or devoid of it altogether! Studies show that it’s in our DNA to be creative. Yet, as we get older and are influenced by society’s limitations of what constitutes creativity, we fail to flex our creative muscle in a way that resonates with us as individuals. All of us are intrinsically creative, whether we’re artistic or not, and in this episode, we break down what creativity means to us and share tips for getting in touch with your creativity and helping others to do the same.

We’re in the final quarter of the year and it’s the perfect time to hunker down, focus, and refine. This is the season to investigate what’s working in your business and what’s not so you can make strategic and educated improvements going into the next year. In preparation, you’re going to need to start collecting data in order to identify your greatest areas of opportunity and gauge where to place your focus.

This past week, we walked through a quarterly optimization training with our clients, and today, we want to share some of the conversations we had there so you can learn from them and apply the takeaways to your own business. In this episode, you’ll find out how one of our clients increased her close rate by 40% and where she discovered she needed to place her focus once her sales process was in order.

Tune in to find out which metrics are worth analyzing, how to pitch up to a planning session, and much more, including some tangible tips for improving your sales strategy!

Today, we want to share with you some behind-the-scenes live action of the “tweaking and repeating” that we do whenever we implement something new in our business. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you’ve probably heard us talk about this concept before. As a refresher, “tweaking and repeating” means to take a particular action in your business for a set amount of time (at least 30 days) and then go back and reflect. Think about how it went, how it made you feel, and if there are any opportunities for you to pivot and improve what you’ve tried.

Listen in as we discuss a rundown of our “tweak and repeat” process on something that we started exactly 30 days ago. We’re going to go through the results, the things we want to keep doing, and the things we want to change. We’re showing you an example, so that you can go through the same assessment process in your own business.

We’ve all known that kid at school. The one who completely takes over group projects and feels the need to micromanage every, single, little detail. If this sounds just a little too familiar, then you’re in good company! Being a perfectionist is tough, and it can come with a host of insidious bedfellows, like procrastination, self-doubt, and debilitating indecisiveness. But what if you could befriend your perfectionism, and make it your superpower?

While it’s undoubtedly challenging dealing with perfectionism, we want to propose imagining a new way forward that doesn’t rely on your self-doubt. What if, instead of beating ourselves up over our tendency towards perfectionism, we instead embrace the strengths we have to offer? After interfacing with countless clients who struggle with perfectionism, we decided to come up with the Bust the Perfectionism Toolkit. This innovative toolkit is made up of easy-to-implement strategies that allow high-achieving business owners to tackle perfectionism once and for all. Tune in as we discuss the powers and pitfalls of perfectionism, and find out what you can expect from the Bust the Perfectionism Toolkit!

All too often, business owners will be trucking along just fine, reaching their goals and generating profits, but that inner feeling of urgency never quite goes away. This is a little easier to justify early on in business. We think of this as the honeymoon phase, but for business. You see all this potential, and your vision is strong.

Growing something is way more exciting than maintaining something. We don’t give enough credit to the outside validation that you get when you first take the leap and start something new. Oftentimes, if you’re fueled by that, you end up staying significantly smaller than your potential because you keep starting over instead of adding or growing. Is there a better way to approach that feeling of wanting to start all over again?